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The Lead with Jake Tapper

CNN Poll: 58 Percent Of Americans Call Trump's First Year A Failure; Rep. Mike Flood, (R-NE), Is Interviewed About Trump Priorities, Economy, DOJ Moves 80 Criminal Division Attorneys To Review The Epstein Files; Tensions In Minneapolis Escalate Outside Federal Building Protest; Trump Pardons Convicted Fraudster For Second Time; Charlie Kirk's Accused Killer In Court. Aired 5-6p ET

Aired January 16, 2026 - 17:00   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Here we are at the movies. I think we went to see a movie that was like a knockoff of cars called "Planes." But that's a --

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Oh, you have no idea how many times I've seen that movie. Dusty Crop Hopper, you can go see him at the Air and Space Museum.

TAPPER: Yes. It's not a very -- it's not a very good movie. But that was -- that was one of the many I say -- oh, here I am with the CNN Grill at the, I think -- I forget if this is a Democratic or the Republican convention, but you see Robert Smigel there with Triumph. And here's Stephen Colbert doing some sort of Hunger Games thing. Again, I forget if this is the Democratic or the Republican convention.

But that's how long ago it was, is that Stephen Colbert could have been at either convention and, you know, whatever, but --

HUNT: You have no idea. I know in Triumph the Comic Dog would come chase me around on Capitol Hill after Trump won that election.

TAPPER: So funny.

HUNT: Here we are --

TAPPER: All right, Kasie. HUNT: -- anyway. Have a great show. Thanks so much. Good luck on "The

Lead."

TAPPER: Thanks so much. We'll look for more next time in "The Arena."

[17:00:48]

TAPPER: Next week. President Trump is going to mark one full year back in office, and the public does not seem to be very pleased with how it's going. The Lead starts right now.

A new CNN poll on the economy and foreign policy and everything in between showing that most Americans believe Trump's job so far has been a failure. Is there any bright spot in this new poll as the president looks to lead his party in a big midterm election year? Plus, the head of ICE showing up at protests today in Minneapolis after another night of tension and arrests. Will President Trump go through with invoking the Insurrection Act and deploy troops to the city? The attorney general of the state of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, will be here in moments.

And a new round of presidential pardons today, including one woman getting a Trump clemency for the second time.

Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper.

Tuesday is going to mark one full year since Donald Trump returned to the White House. And CNN's new poll shows a majority of the American people are not satisfied. Fifty-eight percent of Americans deem Trump's second term so far a failure. Forty-two percent consider it a success. Asked what is the most important issue facing the country, it's not even close, 42 percent Americans overwhelmingly choose the economy and the cost of living, an issue that President Trump largely campaigned on.

Yet when asked how President Trump is handling the economy, 61 percent disapprove, only 39 percent approve. And a majority of Americans polled also say that President Trump is focused on the wrong priorities. Only 36 percent now say that President Trump has the right priorities. That's down from 43 percent near the beginning of his term.

President Trump has been preoccupied with just about everything, but what most Americans want him to focus on is the economy. And that's not what they think he's focusing on. Even his White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, echoed those concerns interviews with Variety. I'm sorry, with Vanity Fair that published last month, quote, "More talks about the domestic economy and less about Saudi Arabia is probably called for. The chief of staff said they like peace in the world, but that's not why he was elected."

So what have been some of Trump's priorities garnering the headlines as of late, as opposed to the economy? Well, today a White House official says President Trump intends to pardon former Puerto Rican Governor Wanda Vasquez, who pleaded guilty to a campaign finance violation last summer. Yesterday, President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy American troops to Minnesota, where tensions between federal law enforcement and anti-ICE protesters are only escalating. Also yesterday, President Trump accepted the Nobel Peace Prize award from Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who actually had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Right now, President Trump's in Palm Beach, Florida, where he participated in a ceremonial renaming of a portion of Southern boulevard that's now called President Donald J. Trump Boulevard.

So, boy, why on earth would the American people think Trump is not focused enough on their problems? Let's discuss these dismal poll numbers as Trump and Republicans enter this critical midterm year. We're going to start with CNN Senior Political Commentator Van Jones and CNN Senior White House Correspondent Kristen Holmes. So, Kristen, first of all, we have heard president every now and then acknowledge that the polls are not good for him, but he usually doesn't acknowledge it. How are these latest numbers landing with the White House?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Look, they're not surprised by the latest numbers. They've been tracking this. They have their own internal polling that they're doing --

TAPPER: Day by day. Yes.

HOLMES: -- including who are watching everything. So none of this is surprising to them. And obviously, President Trump has been briefed on these poll numbers, which is why it is that he comes out every once in a while and says, you know, it's not going to be good. But this is historic. Historically, the party in power does not actually do well in the midterms.

But one thing I do want to know, you talk about all the other things he's doing. I do want to point out on Tuesday, he went to Detroit to give an economic speech. The problem is that that is completely overshadowed by everything else that he is doing. One he does, when he stays on message, seem to be going through as fast as he can, just reading the teleprompter. He doesn't seem engaged in the topic.

[17:05:12]

But on top of that, when you're bringing someone in and accepting their Nobel Peace Prize, when you're talking about Venezuela, when you're threatening the Insurrection Act in Minnesota, all of that overshadows any kind of messaging that you're trying to do on the economy. And President Trump is learning the hard way, as President Biden did before him, that when you're in power, when you're actually in power, it's a lot harder to try to convince people to not actually pay attention to what they're feeling --

TAPPER: Right.

HOLMES: -- just to the messaging. And that's the same problem we saw Biden have.

TAPPER: And in addition, at that Detroit Economic Club speech, he talked a lot about getting rid of Jerome Powell, which is not exactly reassuring to a lot of people in that world.

Van, Breaking the poll down along party lines, it's not too surprising President Trump is retaining strong support among Republicans. But look at Independents, who tend to decide the elections. Trump went from a 43 percent approval rating with Independents at the beginning of his second term. Not great, but all right, and now it's 29 percent. How concerned should President Trump be about this?

VAN JONES, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: He should be very concerned because in order for numbers to be this bad, all Democrats have to be mad, most independents have to be mad, and some Republicans are also losing some faith in. And so when you dig in some of these numbers, even Republicans are doubting him on the economy, et cetera. It turns out if you spend all of your time, you know, kidnapping foreign leaders, having nannies and cooks and roofers thrown to the ground in American cities and trying to steal Greenland, Americans might think you're not paying attention to their actual problems, especially this month when people's insurance premiums are going up and the cost of living has not come back down. So you've got a real problem here. Trump just seems to be running all over the place on his little tricycle in the Oval Office, just grabbing everybody's participation trophies and just, you know, having to do that all the time.

Nobody else is having as much fun as you are. Donald Trump.

TAPPER: So, Kristen, one of the things that happened with the last president is that he had this cocoon of loyal aides who worshiped him and only really gave him the best news. The polling information was only it was spun for him. Is that what's happening here, too?

HOLMES: And President Trump is getting the poll numbers as they're coming out. I mean, he is seeing --

TAPPER: He knows.

HOLMES: -- which is why he knows that this is what it looks like in the landscape. But how you actually fix this problem, that's the big question. And when you talk about this polling, which shows independents have largely turned on President Trump, that is a huge issue, not just for Donald Trump, but for Republicans going into the midterms. Remember, one of the things that President Trump's superpower was in the last election was getting these low propensity voters who were not registered before to come out and vote. It was already going to be difficult to create that in a midterm without President Trump on the ballot.

So when you look at the party split, you're going to need those Independents to at least be interested or at least on the fence about Donald Trump, not be saying that his first term has been a failure if you're trying to secure those votes to win a midterm.

TAPPER: But then, in addition to that, President Trump is, you know, advances he had made with Latino voters and young voters, he's not holding them.

JONES: No.

TAPPER: These approval 30 -- only 30 percent of Latinos and adults younger than 35 now approve of the job the president's doing. Both categories, down from 41 percent at the beginning --

JONES: Yes.

TAPPER: -- of Trump's second term. What does that signal to you?

JONES: A lot of buyers regret. I think a lot of folks in the Latin community were willing to give Trump a chance. They remember the economy before COVID was pretty good. They didn't like some of the, you know, social issues the Democrats were being attacked with, and they gave them a chance. And I think there's a lot of regret because even with the immigration, you know, there's one way to do it where you close the border down and you go targeted and you get real gang bangers out of neighborhoods.

It's something else when you're grabbing nannies, when you're grabbing roofers, when you're grabbing cooks, when you're grabbing people who folks go to church with, people who are doormen, people who are hardworking. When you're grabbing those folks and you're throwing them to the ground and everybody in the neighborhood is afraid to go outside, that does not endear you to the Latin community. Doesn't mean the Latin community is soft on immigration. It just means that these tactics have been designed to drive people into fear. And so they're wiping out, washing away advantages that they had with the Latin vote literally just a year ago.

TAPPER: Kristen, that's got to be concerning. President Trump loves to talk about his votes, how well he did with young voters. I mean, he gets it wrong. He overstates how well he did. But he likes to talk about that. He likes to talk about how well he did with Black voters, with Latino voters.

Again, he always overstates how well he did. But he did improve on a typical Republican numbers, and now those are sinking.

[17:10:00]

HOLMES: Yes. And that's going to be a huge problem for them. You have to also remember that when it comes to these young voters, they tapped into an entirely different network to try and reach them. Those people, those podcasters, a lot of them have also turned on President Trump. They don't like their policies.

They don't like his policies. They've said they shouldn't have gotten behind him. So a lot of the infrastructure that they built to try and get him elected and successfully did get him elected, is started to crumble. And a lot of it comes from the economy in general.

And I do want to say one thing. When we were talking to voters and out in the field during the election, there were a lot of people who didn't want to vote for Donald Trump. They remembered his first term. They remembered the chaos. But the one thing that they kept saying was that the economy was better.

So if you held your nose and voted for Donald Trump and hoped that the economy was going to better, now you're looking at the economy and you're still feeling it's exactly the same. Those are the people who are also regretting their vote right now.

TAPPER: All right, Kristen Holmes and Van Jones, thanks.

Coming up next, I'm going to talk to a Republican congressman, a MAGA loyalist, about how much these poll numbers could impact his colleagues in these key races in the midterm elections coming up in just a few months. Plus, breaking news this hour, a hearing for the man charged in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Why the defense team is pushing to get the entire prosecution team disqualified from the case.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:15:06]

TAPPER: And we're back with our politics lead in that new CNN poll showing rather dismal numbers for President Trump when it comes to how the public feels he's doing on the economy and foreign relations and his overall approval rating. Is this a warning sign for not only the White House but for congressional Republicans in this critical midterm election year? Let's bring in Republican Congressman Mike Flood of the great state of Nebraska.

Congressman, so the poll shows that 42 percent of Americans say that they think the economy will be good next year, but that is down 14 points from the 56 percent who felt optimistic the month that President Trump was inaugurated. Why do you think there's been such a drop in optimism and what's your reaction to it?

REP. MIKE FLOOD (R-NE): Well, I mean, in 2025, we had to set the table so that we could have the 2026 we're about to have. Inflation adjusted, weekly paychecks are up 1.5 percent since the beginning of Donald Trump's term. And at this point in Biden's term, they had fallen 2.4 percent and were down 5.1 percent in about 16 months in. So Americans are going to start to feel the relief from the working families tax cuts as we enter this tax season. They're going to see it in their refunds.

And by the way, the nationwide average for regular gas is at its lowest level in 1,681 days and it's trending lower. According to GasBuddy, average gas prices have dipped below $3 per gallon in 37 states. And in Nebraska, we are like $2.50. So things are going the right direction. We are seeing the things that Americans want.

And I think as the -- as the year gets going here with the refunds, it's going to be a morning in America again.

TAPPER: So President Biden obviously and his administration were criticized for giving a sunny version of the economy even though voters didn't feel that way. Do you think Republicans are falling into that same trap at all? Should there be more acknowledgment of some of the cost of living concerns? What do you think about that?

FLOOD: Well, absolutely. I mean, we all know that affordability is a conversation we have to have. That's why we're working on housing affordability. I myself as the chairman of the Housing and Insurance Subcommittee, worked with all the Democrats, by the way, including Maxine Waters, Emanuel Cleaver. And we have housing affordability reform legislation that's ready to be voted on in the House.

The Senate, working in a bipartisan way, has the same. And the President is working with us to deliver this. Just today, President Trump at the White House held a roundtable on rural health care. The $50 billion that the Republican, One Big Beautiful Bill, is pushing across America. I mean, we are at the table on affordability. We're also addressing fraud, the fraud in Minnesota, the fraud in California. This is something that Americans want to get under control. And the -- and the Trump White House has gotten no credit from anyone on a lot of the networks for what we've done to close the border, to stop the flow of fentanyl into our communities, to make crime go lower, and to address safety. So I really think 2026, the voters are going to have an opportunity to see what's coming. When we get these trade deals figured out, it's going to really allow us to have some sustainability and better trading opportunities, more markets for our AG products like here in Nebraska.

So I'm bullish on 2026. I think better days are to come, and the data will show it.

TAPPER: Do you worry at all that the -- that the items you talk about are undermined by the president himself? The president's own achievements or conversations are undermined by taking Machado's Nobel Peace Prize from him, publicly discussing, invoking the Insurrection Act. You talk about fraud, him taking on fraud in Minnesota, he pardoned some fraudsters today. Does he not get, in his own way of the messages that you're talking about?

FLOOD: Or what about what he did with Maduro, a guy that the Biden administration had put a $25 million reward out for? He went in there, snatch and grab. The guy's now sitting in a jail cell in New York City. That's a victory.

I mean, the president is unconventional. I think everybody can agree to that. But you can't argue with a lot of his results. Look at what happened in Venezuela. Iran is falling apart in front of us here. The folks in Israel credit him with making great strides for peace in their country.

I mean, we have seen so many things happen in a year. We have to focus on the big picture. And the big picture is we passed the most comprehensive tax cut in American history. Last July 4th, it was signed into law. It's now going to start working.

And as Americans get their refunds, they're going to have more money in their pocket. We're working now on health insurance. We have to find bipartisan solutions with our friends in the Democratic Party, which, by the way, we're doing right now. Look at the budget, the fact that we're going to fund this government with bipartisan bills from Democrats before January 30th tells you that we're making progress in Washington. And I couldn't be more proud to be part of a Congress that is actually using regular order to fund the government for the first time since 2018.

[17:20:20]

TAPPER: Republican Congressman Mike Flood of the great state of Nebraska, thank you so much. Always good to see you, sir.

Coming up next, Monday is going to mark one full month since the Justice Department was supposed to have released all of the Epstein files. Just how many have actually been released? Is anything being done to speed up the process? Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: And we're back in our law and justice lead. Right now, the Department of Justice is breaking the law. This coming Monday is going to mark one full month since the Justice Department was legally required by a law that President Trump signed into law to release all files related to Jeffrey Epstein. And so far, only about 1 percent of the files have been released. That's by the Justice Department's own admission.

[17:25:13]

To speed up the process, DOJ leadership is asking a review team to look at 1,000 pages a day, and they moved 80 attorneys from the Southern District of New York to join the review process. A court filing said DOJ employed more than 500 people to review and redact, quote, "millions of pages of materials from the investigations," unquote. Although they have also been faulted for redacting too much.

Let's bring in Marina Lacerda. She's a survivor of Epstein.

Marina, first of all, let me just start with, how are you doing? I mean, this is not fun, I'm sure, to have to rehash and then have the government not abide by the law. How are you?

MARINA LACERDA, JEFFREY EPSTEIN SURVIVOR: I mean -- well, first of all, thank you for having me. I think we're -- I think I'm feeling a mix of, you know, emotionally drained, tired, exhausted, frustrated. I mean, it's just a mix of emotions. I'm truly shocked here.

TAPPER: Earlier this week, you and several other survivors signed a letter to the Department of Justice's inspector general calling for the inspector general to investigate what's going on with the failure of DOJ to comply with the law and demanding more oversight. You said -- you and your group said, among other things, quote, "The manner in which these materials were released reflects serious failures in redaction practices, survivor protection and oversight," unquote, because it looks as though a lot of the offenders are being protected. Their names are being blacked out. While it's unclear that that's happening with all the survivors, that's -- as supposed to happen. Have you heard from the inspector general yet?

What are you hoping to change?

LACERDA: We have not -- we have not heard a word from them. And, you know, we really expect for them to take this letter very serious because it's become, you know, a circus act at this point, and we are completely tired and frustrated and, like I said, exactly what I'm feeling, you know, so we hope that this letter can bring them some sense of realization that we are not going to give up. This is just the beginning for us, and we are ready to, you know, continue this fight.

TAPPER: Did you see that thing in the New York Times? The New York Times interviewed now former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and she said -- and she told Congressman Tom Massie at the time also that she was talking to Trump. They were fighting about her efforts to release the Epstein files. And Trump said something along the lines of, that's going to hurt my friends or hurt some of my friends. I'm not sure if you saw that.

LACERDA: Yes, I did see it. But we did say in the beginning that he was protecting his friends.

TAPPER: It appears the Justice Department is attempting to speed up the process. At least they say they are. They're demanding more pages to be reviewed. Every day they're adding more lawyers. What's your reaction to that?

There's also the flip concern, I'm sure that, you know, if they're doing this too quickly, they're going to mess up with the redactions again. Too many redactions of perpetrators or potential perpetrators, not enough redactions of survivors.

LACERDA: We've heard the song before, right? I mean, it's played a couple times for us and I feel like we're tired of it. And you know, there's always the excuse if they do it too fast, you know, the correct names won't be redacted. There's always seem to be some sort of excuse. We are tired of hearing it.

And they can continue coming up with all these excuses and we will continue to fight because for us, we knew this was going to -- this is not going to be -- this was going to be overnight. It wasn't going to be -- we were going to wake up one day and see the files released. But we continue to fight and we are united and we will continue to stay united and strong.

TAPPER: Marina Lacerda, thank you so much. Really appreciate your candor and your courage.

LACERDA: Thank you for having me.

TAPPER: A shocking social media post from the Department of Homeland Security about protests in Minneapolis has now been deleted. Why DHS is telling me it removed that post next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: In our National Lead, tensions in Minnesota continue to escalate amid anti-ICE demonstrations and the presence of ICE outside the Minneapolis Whipple Federal Building. Today, federal officers in tactical gear forcefully moved the crowd away from the federal building, which has been used as a staging facility by ICE agents and has become a focal point for protesters to gather.

A short time ago, the Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino arrived outside the federal building, walking with ICE agents as they approached some of the protesters. Let's discuss what's going on in Minnesota with the Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. General Ellison, thanks for joining us.

So DHS says 12 people were arrested in Minneapolis for assaulting law enforcement last night. I have heard it hypothesized by people in the law enforcement space that President Trump is talking about invoking the Insurrection Act so that he can try to bait the minority of protesters who are violent into reacting that way. What do you think is going on?

KEITH ELLISON (D), MINNESOTA ATTORNEY GENERAL: Well, what I think is that Minnesotans are overwhelmingly being well within the law, operating within their First Amendment rights. But I think, you know, the ICE agents are pursuing a policy of, I'll call it, provocation. They're reckless. They're not reasonable. They're clearly not trained well. And that is the situation.

Now, it seems to me that we -- everyone I talk to and listen to has been urging caution and restraint by protesters, but also saying that people have a right to protest. It's in the First Amendment. And so I wasn't there. I don't -- I can't comment on any specific act. But I can tell you that overwhelmingly people are peaceful and disciplined and are protesting well within their rights. And ICE is provoking them or trying to.

[17:35:19]

And I do think that they're provoking -- they would love a justification to invoke the Insurrection Act because I think that would give them an advantage in the election, namely to maybe suspend them, which we know that we've heard talk about that as well. So these are some of my concerns. So thanks for asking.

TAPPER: So something else interesting happened. So there was an "ABC News" report and others have reported this, too. I'm just reading this tweet, "Two children, including a six-month-old, were hospitalized last night after federal agents deployed tear gas during Wednesday night's protests." The Department of Homeland Security responded to that tweet and wrote, it is horrific to see radical agitators bring children to their violent riots. Please stop endangering your children.

They later deleted that post. DHS tells me they deleted the tweet after concluding that these parents did not bring their children to the protests. They were bystanders. What can you tell us about this incident and what's your response to DHS tweeting that and then deleting it?

ELLISON: My response to DHS is just more example of their callous disregard of the lives of Americans and Minnesotans. The facts that we have are that this was a family of taking their kids from, I guess, some sort of an athletic event and ended up getting caught in the middle of the ICE behavior and protesters.

And then inexplicably, they shot tear gas too close to the car. And that caused the infant to have some respiratory problems, breathing. I understand from what I've been reported, CPR had to be administered. And people should know that these chemical irritants are highly effective and damaging to the lungs of a developing child.

But to deploy this sort of thing in the middle of a crowd, not knowing who's there, I think is arguably reckless behavior. And I think that's why they took it down. They knew they were wrong. But the thing that bothers me is that they shot first and asked questions later. They shot out their tweet. They made their statement before they even got to the bottom of what actually happened.

The reports I get is that the family was not bringing their children to a protest. But instead, they were just bystanders trying to get from one place to another. So, again --

TAPPER: Go ahead. I'm sorry.

ELLISON: Yes, sir. No, it's all right.

TAPPER: So there's also this disturbing video of a woman in Minneapolis being pulled from her car by ICE agents. She's screaming that she is trying to get to a doctor's appointment. She's screaming that she's autistic and disabled. Pretty alarming that she's screaming that she's autistic and disabled and still being treated the way she is. What happened there? Is your office collecting information about this incident?

ELLISON: Yes. As a matter of fact, we opened up a portal so that we can collect information. If you are received, go to our website, which is ag.state.mn.us, and share these incidents with us. We're collecting them right now. This video that you're showing was very painful to watch. It didn't seem necessary at all.

Like so many things. I mean, there's so many stories of people thrown to the ground unnecessarily. People who are -- people having, I say, just demand showing their papers. As if we're in, like, apartheid South Africa or something. The stories are just mounting. We've had stories of people who are in the Free Independent Press, Jake, like yourself, telling us that they've been aghast and they've been disregarded.

And their status is -- the press has been abused and not treated within constitutional norms. We're -- it's sort of all over the place. And quite frankly, it's deeply disturbing. But we are resolute. We're going to protest. We're going to protest in a disciplined manner. And we're not taking the bait.

TAPPER: I want to read something President Trump said today on Truth Social, "In Minnesota, the troublemakers, agitators and insurrectionists are, in many cases, highly paid professionals." Is there any truth to that? How do you respond to that?

ELLISON: That is -- I would say that is an untrue statement. I have never met such a person as paid to be in, I mean, it's just it's just a lie. I mean, I think you could put it in the category of Haitians in Ohio eating pets or something like that. It's just made up nonsense that we hear from Trump all the time. I will say it. I will answer the question this way, Jake. We have no information that that is true. We have information that that, in fact, is false.

[17:40:05]

And if he is going to make such a claim, maybe he should have no information that that is true. We have information that that, in fact, is false. And if he is going to make such a claim, maybe he should bring some evidence of it. We've seen no such evidence of it. People are outside because they're upset. They're outside because their neighbors are being hauled off and being arrested.

People are upset for the reasons that people tend to be upset, like the death of, you know, Renee Good and the shooting that happened in North Minneapolis and people being yanked out of their cars. That's why people are protesting. That's why they're upset.

TAPPER: Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, thanks so much for your time today. Appreciate it.

ELLISON: Thank you, Jake.

Up next, presidential pardons and a woman granted clemency not once, but twice now by President Trump.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:44:56]

TAPPER: The President's unprecedented and unapologetic or shameless use of the pardon power to reward people who support him, people who have been convicted of sleaze and corruption, well, that clemency continued unabated today with, as far as we can tell, the only apparent MAGA supporter to ever receive this clemency from President Trump twice.

Adriana Camberos, in 2019, during Trump's first term, she was sentenced to 26 months in prison, convicted in a scheme to sell millions of dollars' worth of a fake energy drink, and Trump commuted that sentence on his way out the door in 2021. In 2024, she was convicted again in a different scheme.

"The New York Times" reports that Camberos enlisted the help of lawyers connected to President Trump, including one who represented Rudy Giuliani in his defamation case, and, once again, President Trump pardoned her. Her attorney tells CNN, "Ms. Camberos was wrongfully convicted. She's home now and very grateful to the President, the White House, and Alice Johnson for their support."

Also pardoned today, a banker facing charges including felony bribery. "The Times" reports that his daughter just happened to have donated $3.5 million to the MAGA, Inc. Super PAC. What a coincidence. Here now is the panel, Notice White House correspondent Jasmine Wright and Wall Street Journal reporter Maggie Severns. Am I pronouncing that correctly? Severns.

MAGGIE SEVERNS, REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Severns. Yes.

TAPPER: OK, thank you so much. It's your first time here, so I just wanted to make sure. So the former Puerto Rico governor, Wanda Vazquez, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations last summer, is also expected to get a pardon, according to a White House official. Jasmine, you have covered what happens behind the scenes before President Trump offers these clemencies, pardons, commutations. One key component seems to be people having FaceTime with the President.

JASMINE WRIGHT, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NOTUS: Yes, so much of who can get a pardon right now in this new administration is based on who you know. And that could be somebody close to the President. That could be somebody close to the folks who are put in these pardons office, like Ed Martin, Alice Marie Johnson, who the pardon czar. Somebody close to somebody like Daring Warrington.

Basically trying to get their cases pushed perhaps by lobbyists, perhaps by people who used to work for Trump or in the kind of orbit, in front of the folks who are making these decisions and ultimately bringing the cases to Trump. Susie Wiles is very much so involved in who is -- what cases Trump is looking at. And so it is incumbent upon people to really try to push their cases, which aren't going through the normal DOJ process, right? We know that --

TAPPER: There is a pardons office. Yes.

WRIGHT: Yes. There is a pardons office who typically does this work. People apply through the website. These are folks who have typically gone to prison or have served some of their time and admitted fault in these ways and are then put into that pardons system. They're not going through that process anymore. They're really kind of going to people in this kind of transactional way. And so a lot of it is who you know.

And some of these people have actually gotten themselves in front of the president, like at Mar-a-Lago or other places, to plead their case. And one official told me, like, yes, that has happened, but then the President will say, OK, go talk to this person, go talk to this person. But again, it's who you know, not necessarily that you were sorry for something that you did.

TAPPER: And, Maggie, this really creates a cognitive dissonance when you have President Trump railing against fraud in Minnesota and then pardoning fraudsters, picking up Maduro for drug trafficking, bombing those drug trafficking boats, pardoning the former president of Honduras for drug trafficking. I mean, there's no consistency.

SEVERNS: Yes, I think it really underscores, "The Journal" has done some reporting on how the President sees himself as someone who can make a judgment or be an arbiter of justice, right? As opposed to going through DOJ, going through someone else's process, sometimes he'll see these cases and decide he thinks someone should be pardoned, right? And so it's more -- he sees himself as someone who's capable of delivering that.

TAPPER: One other interesting story this week. The Pentagon is looking to seize control of Stars and Stripes, which is an independent newspaper for service members and their families. It goes back to the Civil War, Stars and Stripes. Yesterday, a Pentagon official posted that the paper would no longer cover, "woke distractions and instead," "we'll focus on all things military. No more repurposed D.C. gossip columns, no more associated press reprints.

Now, Jasmine, critics say that this overt attempt to turn the paper into a mouthpiece to the Pentagon squares with pretty much Pete Hegseth's attitude towards the free press, any sort of accountability, any sort of oversight.

WRIGHT: I mean, yes, this isn't happening in a vacuum. This isn't the first instance in which we've seen the Pentagon try to take more control over what is being reported about the defense industry and the defense department. Obviously, we know that they were trying to make some of the reporters sign a pledge that in a lot of ways people felt that went against their First Amendment right to actually report the news that they --

TAPPER: Yes.

WRIGHT: -- I will just say, are continuing to do and break the biggest stories on, not some of the folks who have come in after them and that are basically been kind of, you know, rubber-stamped by the DOD.

TAPPER: A lot of them are MAGA influencers. Yes.

WRIGHT: Yes. Who can be -- who did the reporting. And so, you know, this is not the first instance from the Pentagon or really the White House, right, who have tried to take control over some of what the press are reporting or who is in the position to actually do that reporting.

[17:50:07]

TAPPER: Is there anything that Congress or Stars and Stripes can do to preserve the paper's independence and not have Pete Hegseth be the de facto editor-in-chief?

SEVERNS: Not that I'm aware. I mean, Stars and Stripes is mostly run out of, I guess now it's the Department of War. This isn't a normal independent publication, right? If Trump announced he was taking over CNN, there would be a whole different conversation to be had, but this is --

TAPPER: Well, stay tuned on that.

WRIGHT: No, I'm sure he would like to.

SEVERNS: Military, you know, military publication that is basically a trade publication inside the military, so they made this announcement, and we'll see if they find any tools to fight back.

TAPPER: Speaking of pro-MAGA voices, Maggie, I do want to ask you about this great report you had in "The Wall Street Journal" that you worked on. It highlights how Trump-aligned social media stars and influencers are raking in huge sums of money. They're being paid by corporate interests, foreign interests to lobby the administration, try to sway public opinion, but unlike actual lobbyists, they're not required to register, they're not required to disclose what they're being paid, or even if they're being paid. You used last month's executive order directing the reclassification of marijuana as an example of how this works. Walk us through it.

SEVERNS: Yes, so in that case, there was a Trump aide that was paid, or I should say a Trump campaign aide, he doesn't currently work at the White House, who was paid $300,000 by a PAC that's funded by the marijuana industry. Now, that payment was not public until far after that person started posting a series of tweets about how Trump should really reclassify marijuana, and how the public supports it, and how that's a great idea. He gave interviews on the topic.

And so this is really a story about how what you see happening online, what you see happening from social media influencers, might not be quite what's going on. You know, in this case we dug up this payment that showed that this person had to take a lot of industry money right before he started going out and talking about this. Now, I should say the people we talk to for this story, they say, I never say anything that's not authentic. I might get paid by a company or an industry, but I'm not making points that aren't what I believe in, and I think that's something that, you know, the audience isn't quite aware that they're getting paid in the first place.

TAPPER: Yes, well, that's the thing, right? I mean, any of these influencers, left or right, if they're being paid, and they say, well, I believe that anyway, it doesn't matter, because we still don't know. Their viewers don't know. Their listeners don't know. They deserve to know.

WRIGHT: Yes, they don't have to advertise it. I mean, I think so much about this administration is about perception, and the administration has been utilizing these influencers to spread their message to the base and to others when they want to correct something, when they want to push a point. And so I think you're seeing this real network, this kind of economy of influencers be able to both tap into their sources in the administration, but also tap into this outside bank of information, which is providing them a lot of money, and I think you're kind of seeing that go across the spectrum of issues that the White House is really dealing with, because this all is so intertwined, and because they've utilized these influencers basically since the campaign.

TAPPER: Jasmine Wright, Maggie Severns, thanks so much. Appreciate you both.

[17:53:08]

We're monitoring a hearing happening now for the man who's been charged in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. His defense team is pushing to get the entire prosecution team disqualified from the case. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Breaking news in our Law and Justice Lead. A hearing is underway right now, and it could have a big impact on the case against Tyler Robinson. That's the 22-year-old man accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk back in September. At issue, his defense team is claiming that there's a conflict of interest among state prosecutors, and they're requesting that all of the prosecutors be thrown off the case.

CNN's Nick Watt is on Provo, Utah. Nick, what exactly is the defense claiming here, and why could this be so consequential?

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Jake, it has been drama here in this courthouse behind me this afternoon. The prosecutors have accused the defense of laying an ambush, of stalling, and of trying to get all of them thrown off the case so they can maybe get a state prosecutor in who might be a little bit more lenient and might not be seeking the death penalty.

The county prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. We've had two hours of arguments over whether the county prosecutors can even argue whether they have a conflict. We've had more discussion about whether this should be closed or not. Anyway, the crux of it is the defense says that one of the deputy prosecutors, his daughter, goes to UVU. She's 18 years old. She was there that day when Charlie Kirk was killed.

She was in the crowd of about 3,000. And they say that that means this deputy prosecutor is going to be emotional, is tainted, and should be removed. And, because he shared this info with other people in the office, they should all be disqualified. Jake?

TAPPER: How is the prosecution responding?

WATT: They say nonsense. This woman was looking away at the time. She just heard it. She didn't even really know what was going on and she hasn't suffered any lasting trauma. You know, the other issue they're debating right now is T.V. access to this trial. Now, the defense does not want it. Erika Kirk, Charlie's widow, does. She said Charlie was shot in public. This should be in public. Right now they're arguing over the cameraman apparently zooming in too close on Tyler Robinson's lips, which would allow lip readers to figure out what he's saying. That is the debate right now going on.

[17:59:41]

So they haven't even really got to the meat of this as to whether these prosecutors will be removed from this case or not. If everything goes according to plan May 18th, Jake, we should hear those prosecutors laying out their case against Robinson, which the crux really DNA on the alleged weapon and also an alleged confession on a Discord chat by Tyler Robinson. We'll just see if we're going to stick to that timeline. Jake?