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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Officials Accidentally Text War Plans To Journalist; Pentagon Chief Denies War Plans Text, Which White House Confirmed; Democrats Pounce On Trump Team's Blunder, Call For Probe; "NewsNight" Panelists Debate On Which Administration Is Accountable For The Border Policy Problem; A Trump Administration Group Chat Fiasco Unravels. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired March 24, 2025 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST (voice over): Tonight the group chat overshares, top Trump officials accidentally text top secret war plans to a journalist. Now, the blunder is inviting scrutiny about national security, competence and hypocrisy.
PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Any security professional, military, government or otherwise, would be fired on the spot for this type of conduct.
BERMAN: Plus, deport first, ask questions later. The Trump administration says, forget about due process.
TOM HOMAN, TRUMP'S BORDER CZAR: Due process, what was Laken Riley's due process?
BERMAN: As a judge puts up roadblocks to its deportation dreams.
Also shouting at an empty chair.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How dare you?
BERMAN: Constituents go full Clint Eastwood as Republican lawmakers go invisible.
Live at the table, Dan Koh, Scott Jennings, Joe Borelli, Tiffany Cross and Leah Wright Rigueur.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Good evening, everyone. I'm John Berman in New York in for Abby Philip.
Let's get right to what America is talking about. Is it a mega mistake, a MAGA mistake, a mind-numbing mistake, or all of the above? And now there are accusations one senior official is flat out lying about it. Tonight, there are questions that the Trump administration broke the law while endangering national security while using a group chat on Signal to coordinate a military operation on a foreign power. The Trump administration national security officials used what bros used to send memes to each other to coordinate a top secret strike on Yemen.
The country knows this thanks to The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg. Goldberg was accidentally added to the signal chat. He didn't think it was real until bombs fell to confirm it was.
So, let's start with who was on this chain, 18 people. Among them, there is Goldberg, the journalist. He was apparently added by Mike Waltz, the national security adviser, a user identified as MAR, Marco Antonio Rubio, the secretary of state, a user named J.D. Vance, not so thinly veiled to the vice president, T.G., Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence, Scott B., apparently the treasury secretary, John Ratcliffe, CIA, and Pete Hegseth, secretary of defense, all on it.
Today, the National Security Council says this appears to be on authentic message chain. They say it shows the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials.
Now Hegseth heavy handedly implied something far different.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HEGSETH: You're talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so- called journalist who's made a profession of pedaling hoaxes time and time again to include the, I don't know, the hoaxes of Russia, Russia, Russia, or the fine people on both sides hoax or suckers and losers hoax. So, this is the guy the pedals in garbage. This is what he does. Nobody was texting war plans, and that's all I have to say about that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: You could believe that. But then there are the screenshots showing a pretty fulsome debate about when to strike and how to exact concessions from Europe and even after taking action. Then there's what Goldberg just said on CNN.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEFFREY GOLDBERG, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, THE ATLANTIC: No, that's a lie. He was texting war plans. He was texting attack plans, when targets were going to be targeted, how they were going to be targeted, who was at the targets when the next sequence of attacks were happening.
They were running a war plan on a messaging app and didn't even know who was invited into the conversation. I mean, it's an obvious, ridiculous security breach.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Closing Goldberg talks about what, who, where, when, why of attack sequencing, the very kinds of things America's enemies would love to know. And the entire episode seems to make a mockery of a Hegseth declaration made just last week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HEGSETH: Under the previous administration, we looked like fools. Not anymore.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: All right. Moments ago, Kaitlan Collins was reporting on her show, Scott, that there is shock inside the White House that this chat was texted to Jeffrey Goldberg.
[22:05:05]
Are you shocked?
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, sure. I mean, it's a shocking thing and you know, they've admitted that it was a mistake and admitted that it's authentic, so they're owning up to it. I think they're still, based on what I've heard tonight, trying to figure out how it happened. I'm not sure that National Security Adviser Waltz even knows Goldberg. In fact, I don't believe he knows him and has never met him.
I did learn a few things in some of my conversations, if you're interested. One is that the Signal program was preloaded on a number of devices and agency computers in this circuit when they got there. So, in their view, it was already in use. Number two, in some of the messages, they talk about needing to go to the high side computers, which is the classified system. So, they clearly were knowing there was a line on what you could discuss in a chat like this versus classified system. Number three, there is a dispute over whether the term war plans is being exaggerated. And number four, look, I love the policy. It's well-executed. You've got a thoughtful policy discussion going on, and we did what the Biden administration would not do, stop these people from harassing our shipping lanes and our boats and our Navy. So, go on the Trump administration for reversing a bad policy.
BERMAN: So, a wild triumph. And I will note that Pete Hegsehth does not agree with you that it's all authentic. He went and attacked Jeffrey Goldberg and said there were no war plans there. Is it, Dan, the triumph that Scott just described.
DAN KOH, FORMER WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY CABINET SECRETARY UNDER PRESIDENT BIDEN: Listen, I spent a significant amount of my time in the Situation Room from the Oval Office dealing with classified information. Now, Scott knows the amount of care that is taken to make sure that we are being respectful of the implications of American lives, if that information would've fallen in the wrong hands. You put away your phone, you take away your watch, anything that could potentially relay. That's so important.
And the fact that 18 of the most senior government officials in this country were on a text chain showing war plans and not a single one of them, including the chief of staff, who's supposed to be overseeing this, said, hey, maybe we shouldn't do this anymore, should concern people regardless of party.
And one more thing, there were serious questions about whether the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, was qualified to be the secretary of defense. We got our answer today.
BERMAN: Tiffany?
TIFANY CROSS, JOURNALIST: this is so utterly ridiculous. It's not only a national embarrassment. This is a national emergency, John. And I just feel like anybody who has the temerity to come on air and try to defend this, Scott, you just said that they're apologetic or that they've admitted some sort of wrongdoing. We just heard the defense secretary denied this whole thing and instead choose to attack Jeffrey Goldberg, who did the responsible thing by not reporting out everything that he heard on this or read on the Signal chat.
When this happened, I actually talked to some friends who worked in intel during the Obama administration and the Biden administration, and I asked, how do you normally communicate about something like this? And there's a SCIF, that you have to have the highest security level to participate in these conversations. You go in a room where there's no electronic devices allowed, there are no windows. It's taken very seriously.
And this is what happens when you have a man whose first job in government was, as president of the United States, who's politically inept, who employs people who are politically inept. There's nothing funny about this. We're putting people who serve this country at danger and we're asking people to believe nonsense. And this is a travesty.
Do we think President Xi of China is tweeting or texting about his national security plans? Do we think Volodymyr Zelenskyy is texting about his plans? Do we think President Vladimir Putin is spoonfeeding Russian talking points to American diplomats even on Signal? This is a thing that people use to talk to their side pieces, something Pete Hegseth would certainly know about. This is something that people need to talk about March Madness. It is a crisis that we need to take very seriously, and we can't present this as journalists. We cannot present this as though these are two opposing political points of view. This is a serious issue that we need to take seriously.
BERMAN: Do you take it seriously, Joe?
JOE BORELLI, FORMER REPUBLICAN LEADER, NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL: I think the administration should take it seriously, right? This is something that's obviously a mistake.
BERMAN: What was Hegseth doing there just, you know, when he landed off the plane there attacking Jeffrey Goldberg for basically just printing what was in these exchanges except for the parts that were top secret? He's attacking him and saying it didn't exist.
BORELLI: He should have known that they were authentic texts between him and other people. He should have acknowledged it. He should have acknowledged it as a mistake. He should have moved forward, right? This is something that should be a one day story. You made a mistake. You investigated why it happened, how the journalists got on and move on.
The difference with the Trump administration, in the Trump administration, the mistakes are done by accident. What the Biden administration, the mistakes were done by design, the overall reversal of the support for Saudis in Yemen, the troop withdrawal in Afghanistan, the reversal of sanctions against Iran, the Remain in Mexico policy reversal, those are mistakes by Joe Biden. Not done by accident, by design.
LEAH WRIGHT RIGUEUR, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: That's sidestepping the actual question that we're dealing with right now. The larger question is a question of national security. It is a question of a massive data breach. Being a historian, I went back and I looked, what kind of data breaches have we had? Almost all of them have been deliberate. All of them have been large. We have had nothing.
And Jonah Goldberg actually says this or Goldberg -- Jeffrey Goldberg actually said this both in his interview but also in the article.
[22:10:03]
If you go and take a look at what he wrote about, he says, we have not seen this kind of data breach, which he indicates is indicative of a kind of carelessness.
But I actually think it's indicative of something much larger, something much more systematic, right? So, when you have people, I think, that are not qualified to be in roles in taking on these things, but also kind of not qualified in terms of competence and knowing how things work, knowing do we go, how should we be using what kinds of systems should we be using, what are the protocols, there are all kinds of questions that those arise.
There is a larger issue too of accountability. How are we going to deal with this? It's not something that should just go away in the news cycle tomorrow. It is something that should be investigated. It should be investigated with oversight.
And I have a -- look, the real question I think we should be thinking about is who is doing the investigating of the investigators, right? So, the Trump White House says, we'll take care of it. But the problem is in lots and lots of these cases, there have been independent investigations. There have been congressional investigations, including on both sides of the aisle, but there have also been inspectors generals investigations, right? This is how you pinpoint the problem. What do you do when those options are gone when the Trump administration has removed them? You can't continue to say, well, this is just carelessness, this is just an accident. Because one time maybe is an accident, but we're also talking about people that should know better and should do better, particularly when it comes to issues of national security. KOH: To the point of this being systemic, if you notice the group name was Houthis P.C. Group, P.C., people who don't know, stands for principals committee. In the White House, you have staff level meetings, you have deputy level meetings, and then you have principals committee meetings. In order to be eligible to be in a principals committee meeting, you have to be secretary level or above.
So, as mentioned, this is a systemic thing where this is the most senior people in our administration who are being careless with information and classified data. And surely it's not the first time that they have done this.
And I think the most important thing about this particular case that people should understand is that this was not just a drone strike, although that would be very, very concerning regardless of that, but this was a manned mission. There were human lives on the line for this mission. So, the fact that this could have fallen into wrong hands because of this carelessness would have potentially impacted the lives of American soldiers.
BERMAN: Did I see you nodding yes when the -- I think it was professor saying there should be an investigation into this?
JENNINGS: Yes. I do think there should be, and I think they're already doing it at the White House. But I totally agree with you because they're not quite sure how he wound up on the thing. And we need to find that out if there's something wrong with this system, which, by the way, I should just add again, they say already existed, was preloaded on computers and devices when they got there and was in use upon their arrival. So, maybe we needed an investigation of when Signal was started being used and by who and why. People thought it was a good system to use.
But, of course, when you make a mistake, you own up to it, you investigate the cause of it.
RIGUEUR: Did Pete Hegseth just own up to it, admit to it?
JENNINGS: Well, look, I don't think there's -- I mean, I mean the White House has admitted --
BERMAN: I think the answer there is no, right?
JENNINGS: The head of the National Security Council and his spokesman have said these appear to be authentic messages, so they have absolutely validated that it occurred. So, you own up to it. You figure out what happened and you use it as a teachable moment, which is don't make these kinds of mistakes again. And you learn from it. And I agree, you do try to move forward.
But I agree with you, you have to look into these things. You can't slough it off. It's an important deal. And I'm sure there's more details about it that we don't know yet, but that's what an investigation would uncover.
KOH: But what does it say that our secretary of defense, who leads the largest employer in the entire world, 2.9 million people, and who oversees the best fighting force in the world, was willing to share war plans on a text message app?
JENNINGS: Well, there is a dispute about the nature of war plans between Hegseth and Goldberg, and I haven't seen what the texts look like and neither have you. And so we'll let them fight that out. They're saying that it wasn't --
BERMAN: I think this might be an issue of like capital W, capital P here.
JENNINGS: I don't know.
BERMAN: They confirmed the authenticity of all the exchanges there, which included targeting information, personnel, you know, weapons being used. That seems like, at a minimum, lowercase W lowercase P war plan, yes, a plan for carrying out a military action.
JENNINGS: Sure. I mean, obviously some details were being shared in the moment that it was occurring. But, again, we don't really know because Jeffrey didn't publish all these things, which is probably the responsible thing to do.
CROSS: If I have to choose between the two, I'm going to believe the journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg. And we do know the danger of this, Scott, quite frankly, because in December, the FBI and the CISA warrants and they named check Signal that we have to be careful about engaging these kind of platforms. They actually implicated China, although China denied any wrongdoing, but they said that China has the ability to infiltrate these systems and it threatens our metadata.
[22:15:00]
Now, this is before Kash Patel ran it, Mr. Deep State himself. So, who knows what kind of nonsense they're spewing now. But this was actually something that our own American agencies warned us about. And the secretary of defense ignored those warnings and still involved Signal, and according to the reporting Waltz himself included.
BERMAN: We'll talk about if there will be an investigation and by whom and what it might uncover and all the legal implications. Democrats are already pouncing on all of this, calling for, quote, heads to roll. Will Heads roll? I mean, people are talking about Mike Waltz, the national security adviser.
Plus, breaking news in the standoff over whether Trump could buy courts with his deportation flights. The Justice Department is now citing the state secrets privilege, not the one on Signal, to avoid giving any more information. Another special guest joins our fifth seat.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BERMAN: Right. More now on the breaking news, the group chat of top Trump administration officials with major geopolitical consequences and a question, should there be legal ramifications too? Trump national security brass used Signal to plot a strike on Yemen and potentially endangered national security. It breaks protocol, but does it break the law? Democrats say they want to find out.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): This debacle requires a full investigation into how this happened, the damage it created, and how we can avoid it in the future.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: All right. Joining us now in our fifth seat at the table is CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig. The question is, do we need a lawyer here?
ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: I would recommend everybody should get a lawyer as a basic.
BERMAN: What laws are we talking about?
HONIG: So, let me just say before we get into the specifics of the law, I don't like to do the thing where you just look at the law in black and white, the checklist, and go check, check crime, because I was a prosecutor for a long time, you have to go to the next step. And, by the way, if we look at the Hillary Clinton case, the Joe Biden case, the Donald Trump case, those extra factors were considered.
But let me give you the lay of the land here, the law. So, first of all, was this grossly negligent? I'm sort of interested to see what people think But was this grossly negligent is part one. And then part two, was classified information removed from its proper place of custody. Those are the two tests.
You know, I'm very interested to see what the panel thinks here, but grossly negligent in the removal of classified information or sensitive national security information from its proper place of custody. People?
CROSS: Yes.
JENNINGS: Well, is it grossly negligent if -- you know, I don't know how this guy was added to the chain and apparently they don't either. What if it were some technical glitch or a simple mistake? Does that reach the level of grossly negligent?
HONIG: No. If it was a technical glitch, no. But I think the question I would be focused on as a prosecutor is not so much how was Mr. Goldberg, Jeffrey Goldberg, added to the chain, but them being on the chain in the first place, it would, I would be asking myself the question if I was back at DOJ, is the use of Signal to discuss this stuff in itself grossly negligent?
BOROLLI: Well, again, I mean, as Scott pointed out, this was something that was preloaded on their phones. Do we not believe that members of the Capitol actually converse on our phones?
(CROSSTALKS)
BERMAN: I'm not competing that Scott told this, but Signal's not supposed to be used, I'm told, by others on government devices here. I'm not saying it wasn't there but --
JENNINGS: That's what they're saying. But, again, this is something that if you investigated it or looked into it, that you would find out.
BERMAN: But I think even if it was loaded on their devices, what Elie's asking here is by placing this conversation on Signal, was it removed from where it should be in a SCIF or, you know, to somewhere where it should be, which is on a social media app?
JENNINGS: Well, it goes to the nature of the information, right? Is it secure enough or did it reach the level of classification that it couldn't have been shared? I don't know the answer to that.
KOH: This wasn't a fun group chat to decide what we're going to order Sweet Green for lunch. This is human lives on the line that was happening imminently. I don't care if you mixed up the trade representative's initials with a reporter. The reality is that if you had added someone who wasn't a responsible journalist, they could have leaked that immediately to the wrong sources and American lives could have been lost. That is what we are missing here.
So, if there is not consequences for this, what does that say about how we uphold our values as Americans? What does that say to our foreign adversaries that people can be that reckless and get away with? What does it say to the millions of people who are putting their lives on the line every day for this country that their leader is being so reckless?
BORELLI: But I think the overall premise actually speaks more to that than just this mistake. This is definitely a mistake, point stipulated. But this was the Trump administration doing an act that actually is welcomed by Europe, by many other partners around the world. This is the Trump administration guaranteeing the freedom of navigation.
BERMAN: Not J.D. Vance?
BORELLI: This is -- well, J.D. Vance -- and it's interesting, because this was supposed to be a private chat. And we do see some disagreement in private in the administration, but we also see them rally behind President Trump, who made the correct decision of launching the strike, guaranteeing the freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.
BERMAN: Who does the -- if there is an investigation, who would lead this investigation normally?
HONIG: Well, let's go through the possibilities here, right? The United States Department of Justice, I'll bet anybody here that will not get off the ground, there will not be an investigation launched by this Justice Department. By the way, it might be the kind of case you would ordinarily appoint special counsel where you may have a conflict of interest. Again, not happening, so take them out.
It's not going to be a state or local crime. So, this is a federal, uniquely federal crime. So, forget about your state A.G.s, your D.A.s, your Alvin Braggs, and the like. Congress, I mean, you know, who controls Congress? I'm not sure how much power the minority party in Congress has to meaningfully investigate but that's about it.
JENNINGS: As an immediate matter in the White House Counsel's Office, I'm certain, has an immediate need to look into the actions of the employees of the building.
[22:25:00]
I'm sure that's already underway, preservation of documents and so on and so forth. That's pretty common. But that's not necessarily a law enforcement agency.
BERMAN: What's your take here, Tiffany?
CROSS: I mean, because I think the biggest mistake we could make is to treat this as though it's a political issue, as though there are two opposing points of view here. This is a national security issue.
And I appreciate your question, Elie, and respect your legal analysis, but I just don't -- that question is asked and answered. Of course, this is dangerous. I use Signal. It's not preloaded on your phone in the sense that everybody's already automatically in your group chat. I mean, I treat my own Signal chats with more care and more discretion than our secretary of defense. That is a huge deal.
And to your point, no, of course, the DOJ is not going to investigate this. Pam Bondi is too interested in what Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett is saying about Elon Musk, the co-president of the United States. I think this is a dangerous time, and we have to look at this. According to the reporting, Waltz is the person who added Jeffrey Goldberg to this chat.
Now, you imagine who Waltz might have in his phone. Who else might he have in his phone that he could have accidentally added?
To your point, Dan, he could have added an adversarial relationship to this chat. This put human lives at danger, it put our national security at danger. So, I think anytime we talk about this and it becomes whataboutism and what about Hillary and what about Biden did. Okay, that's all in the past. What we're dealing with right now is an inept president who is employing people who have no idea what they're doing, and they're making like plausible mistakes like this, which is very dangerous.
So, as a patriot, Scott, I find it really troubling because they ran on this whole idea of this pseudo patriotism, this regressive masculine patriotism. Yet everything they're doing runs against making America great. It was never great, so I'm not going to say the again part, but making America great, that you're trying to defend the indefensible. Yes, I absolutely feel that way. I absolutely feel that way. And I think if you had the history that my people had in this country, that you might have a modicum of understanding and respect for that, America was never great for me. But I understand that --
BORELLI: But we talk -- we will talk later about why the Democratic Party is so unpopular. It's that America --
CROSS: I'm not here to represent the Democrats. I'm here representing me. And I think it is a common understanding that America may have been great for you, it was not great for me. I think there are people who want her to fulfill that promise. But the point of this discussion right now is the national security of this country, which your party put at risk.
I'm not a member of the Democratic Party. I'm not here to represent them, but for me as a journalist, I'm telling you this was a huge problem. So, instead of attacking Jeffrey Goldberg, what they could do is act like men and own this mistake since they ran on this regressive masculinity campaign, act like men and say, you know what, we failed. But instead what you heard was this president yet again lie and say, oh, I don't know anything about it. Soon enough, it's going to be, I don't know this Hegseth guy that well.
It's a consistent party of lies with this guy and it's disturbing that there are so many people willing to defend this instead of saying, yes, this is a problem. They have not taken responsibility. They can set a --
JENNINGS: The White House has literally admitted that the messages are authentic.
CROSS: Who? Donald Trump didn't admit this.
JENNINGS: And Brian Hughes, the spokesperson for the National Security Council.
CROSS: Well, the president didn't.
JENNINGS: So, there you go. And number two, they said --
BERMAN: And we just heard from Pete Hegseth, he didn't.
JENNINGS: They have said, they're looking into and trying to figure out how this happened.
You know, you raised the issue of patriotism. I think the patriotic act was what the president did in ordering the strikes in the first place. Go back in time. It was Biden who took the Houthis off the terrorist list and let this problem fester for four years. The only reason this situation occurs today is because they've been harassing ships, harassing our Navy, and finally, Trump shows up, re-designates them, goes to war --
BERMAN: The ships are still not using the Red Sea though, Scott. The ships have not returned to the Red Sea. JENNINGS: And the strike and the military precision at which it was carried out was incredible.
So, what we have here, you raised the issue of patriotism. The patriotic act is for the commander-in-chief to do the right thing, which he did in ordering the strike in the first place.
BERMAN: All right. What we're going to do is we're going to take a quick break here.
Breaking news in the fight between the judge and the Trump Department of Justice over deportation flights, the DOJ is now using the state secrets privilege. What that means going forward.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:33:41]
BERMAN: All right. We do have breaking news tonight. Brand new developments in the Trump administration's attacks on a judge's ruling, the judge who issued a temporary pause to deportation flights based on an eighteenth century law. The attorney general, Pam Bondi, invoked the State Secrets Act in refusing to turn over information requested by the judge about when the flights left, who was on them, etcetera.
This is the language from the 10-page document filed. "Further intrusions on the executive branch would present dangerous and wholly unwarranted separation of powers harms with respect to diplomatic and national security concerns that the court lacks competence to address."
So, insulting a judge may not be a great idea. And it was not the only tough moment with a judge today. Just hours ago, a different federal judge told Trump administration lawyers point blank, they are treating migrants worse than --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PATRICIA MILLET, JUDGE, U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DC CIRCUIT (voice-over): "There were plane loads of people. There were no procedures in place to notify people. Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemy Act."
DREW ENSIGN, DOJ ATTORNEY (voice-over): Well, your honor, we certainly dispute the Nazi analogy."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: All right. While we have you here, councilor Elie Honig State Secrets Act, what is it? And what was that reference to Nazis from the judge there? Because it was something specific.
HONIG: Yeah. So, the State's Secrets Act is one of those rare and blessed things in the law that is almost exactly what it sounds like.
[22:35:01]
It's when the government says that's a state secret. We can't turn it over. It's too dangerous. It's rarely invoked. Usually judges do defer to it. Not always. Judge Boasberg in this case actually knew this was coming. The government said they're considering it.
Judge Boasberg said he's skeptical in part because the government's already put out a video showing some of this. So, we said how sensitive can it be? We'll see what he does. But that won't end this. All that's going to do is end the judge's ability to get more information about the flights.
Now, the Nazi comparison that the judge made today was listening to the oral argument. The point the judge was making is the last time, we, as a country used this Alien Enemies Act was during and after actually, World War two, where Germans who were suspected of being Nazi sympathizers were given a hearing before they were loaded onto planes before they were deported.
And that was really the key question at today's oral argument. What process, if any, are these people in this case, the Venezuelan gang members entitled to before they're shipped out? And the thing that I found was interesting is the Trump administration lawyer even said they are entitled to some due process. It's through this thing called habeas. It's not the greatest form of due process, but the Trump administration is on record now saying they are entitled to some form of due process.
BERMAN: Going forward or going backwards, too? These planes are gone.
HONIG: Right. That's the catch. It's really difficult legally and practically to bring a habeas lawsuit if A, you're out of the country. You can, but it's really hard if you're in El Salvador. And B, if the lawyers don't even know who you are, I don't know how they're even going to get in touch with counsels. And that was sort of one of the points of, like, isn't this a little bit of a Catch-22?
You government, you're saying they're entitled to bring these habeas cases but it's almost impossible to do after the fact. And really, the fault that the judge, Judge Boasberg has laid on the government here is even if you did not intentionally defy me, you played it real fast and loose. You had those planes ready to go. You could've waited. They were in the air. They were scrambled. And when I gave the order, it was apparently already too late.
TIFFANY CROSS, AUTHOR, "SAY IT LOUDER: BLACK VOTERS, WHITE NARRATIVES, AND SAVING OUR DEMOCRACY": Well, I -- I think the challenge here is we actually don't know if a lot of these people -- I don't trust the Trump administration to tell me who these people are and if they're actually gang members.
In January, the Trump administration arrested over 1200 people - ICE arrested over 1200 people. Less than half were actually convicted criminals where there was no evidence that they had done anything wrong other than step foot in this country.
HONIG: Well, I don't think -- they don't have to be criminals. This is not a prosecution.
BORELLI: They don't have to be here in court.
CROSS: Fair enough.
BORELLI: They were executing warrants for criminals, so you might be a gangbanger. Your buddy sitting on the couch next to you, also illegal. Those are people that got caught up in these drag nets. So, I'm not -- I'm not upset one bit.
CROSS: But I -- but I -- I think my point about them take just randomly, indiscriminately rounding up people, I just -- I have flashbacks. I'm old enough to remember when they were doing this with actual children. And according to the human rights law or the Human Rights Watch rather, there are still over 1300 children who we don't they never reunited with their family. We don't know where they are. So, I think this idea of --
BORELLI: Why are these children here?
CROSS: Because their families are trying to escape incomprehensible circumstances.
JENNINGS: And can I use the word --
BORELLI: Because Joe Biden let them in.
CROSS: No, it was not during - it was not Joe Biden's administration that let them in.
BORELLI: The reason why we don't know we don't know why --who's --
(CROSSTALK)
BORELLI: -- there's children in here --
CROSS: Okay.
BORELLI: -- is because the failures of Joe Biden in letting new ones --
CROSS: Again, it goes back to Joe Biden.
BORELLI: Yes, it does.
CROSS: He's not the president right now.
BORELLI: He let the people in.
CROSS: The fact of the matter though is --
BORELLI: They came in because Joe Biden failed on the border. He even flew them on the plane --
CROSS: Okay, fine. If you want to say Joe Biden failed on the border, fine. But the fact of the matter is -- (CROSSTALK)
BORELLI: -- brought them here to this country and now, Donald Trump --
BERMAN: Joe then Tiffany then Dan.
BORELLI: (inaudible)
BERMAN: Oh, you're done? Tiffany.
BORELLI: Joe Biden, let these people in. If she has a problem that we don't know who they are, that they were unvetted, this could have been solved in a regular immigration process where we would have seen, hey, you're a member of a gang. You can't come in. Hey, you're not a member of a gang. You're welcome to come in.
BERMAN: Tiffany?
CROSS: I -- I don't think that is how it goes. And if we want to keep talking about the Joe Biden administration, then rewind time. But the fact of the matter is when Donald Trump was in office the first time, he, was a champion of separating families.
BERMAN: All right.
CROSS: And as a result of that, John, I just want to say over 1300 children remain lost. I do not trust this administration --
BERMAN: But we are talking --
CROSS: Yeah.
BERMAN: We're talking about the Alien Enemies Act here.
CROSS: I understand we're talking about that.
BERMAN: We're talking about using this wartime powers to -- to extract what they call gang members.
CROSS: But there is still a human rights issue and the way that these people are treated is completely inhumane. And the fact of the matter is if these were white babies being stripped from their families, if these are white men with families, there would be a whole different level of humanity extended to them, and I don't see that happening. The way these people are treated is absolutely criminal -- criminal.
BERMAN: Dan.
KOH: I think the larger issue here is that this is a president and administration who's making a mockery of the law and only using the law when it's convenient for their agenda. Let me give you an example.
Here, in the case of, deportations, they - they disrespect due process. They say it's not needed. But, when they fire 16,000 probationary employees and a judge says you can't do that, they say, wait a minute. Due process. Supreme Court, come in. You got to stop this and try to file an injunction. There is no consistency here. It's literally the whim of this president and his administration for whatever favors him. That's the problem.
BORELLI: But let me pull us back 40,000 feet or however the cruising out through those planes was, right? But do you think there's not a comms team in the White House watching right now, giddy that there's a member of the Biden administration, you know, extolling the virtues of why we need to afford trende (ph) Iraq with due process when there was no due process.
[22:40:08]
(CROSSTALK)
KOH: I extol the virtues of --
(CROSSTALK)
KOH: I extol the virtues of not permitting crimes --
(CROSSTALK)
BORELLI: -- people when they came here, and they ended up committing crimes -- there's Laken Riley, there's --
(CROSSTALK)
KOH: -- or having an independent DOJ. That's what I respect.
BORELLI: Right.
KOH: And you should, too.
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: (inaudible) of government. They're in open defiance of the judiciary right now.
BORELLI: No. No. They're in litigation right now. They're respecting the court, and they decided to invoke a legal statute to -- to prevent any more information.
CROSS: I'll -- I'll quote an amazing legal analyst and say they played it fast and loose. Is that what you said?
HONIG: That's what I said.
CROSS: Yeah.
BERMAN: Scott.
JENNINGS: I mean, obviously, there's a huge dispute between the executive branch and the judiciary over who's got what authority to do what here. I think the Trump administration has an argument to make. It's not going to be sorted out at the district or even court of appeals level. At some juncture, because it is a serious separation of powers issue, the Supreme Court has to step in.
By the way, you invoked the word, inhumane. I would just point out that I don't think Jessica (ph) Nungaray or Laken Riley or any other victims of some of these illegal immigrants and gang members, they weren't treated very humanely. And I think what Trump is responding to is an outcry from the American people to solve this issue, to get the criminals out, and that's what they're doing.
That's what they believe their mandate is to do. And I think there are legal arguments to be made, but you cannot deny that the American people are giving them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to exiting from the country, these animals.
BERMAN: No, and I will just, in closing, this Appeals Court judge was also making the point clearly, the Nazis had victims who were treated in humane ways, as well. But the Nazis were granted a process to determine whether, in fact, they were Nazis when they were being deported with the Alien Enemies Act.
We will see if there is a process that is put, maybe that the easiest solution is to put a process in place. Hey. We're going to a have a hearing, and then we're going to remove all these gang members until everyone's happy in the end.
Thank you all. Elie, thank you for joining us. Everyone else, hang on. Next, the rise of empty chair town halls, as Republican lawmakers refuse to face -- some refuse to face their constituents. We will discuss with completely full chairs, here.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:46:43]
BERMAN: All right. Tonight, I want to talk about chairs. Who is sitting in them and who, like Elijah at Passover, is conspicuously absent? I can explain that to anyone who needs to know. Voters want to hear from Republican lawmakers. Republican lawmakers don't want to face tough crowds, so that produces scenes like these, constituents getting aggrieved at empty stages.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNKNOWN: Please tell me why Elon Musk, an unelected billionaire who is also a federal contractor who has received billions of dollars in federal contracts, has unfettered authority to indiscriminately fire federal workers slash agency budgets with no oversight.
UNKNOWN: I am pissed.
UNKNOWN: While you stand up for your people and stop Congress from taking food out of the mouths of hungry constituents in your district just to pay for the billionaire's tax cuts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: I can say with high confidence the chair did not respond. Professor Leah Wright Rigueur is back with us. So, what do you think?
RIGUEUR: I mean, so first, there's a spectacle of it, and certainly, it is dramatic. It's you know, there's the picture of, in this case, Elise Stefanik, but there have been a whole series of other, congressional, town halls all across the country -- Montana, Alaska, some in Florida, all over the place.
And that really has been about, I'm going to express myself even as we are dismissed as not important. And so, I think that there is an -- an urge to dismiss this and say this is just a bunch of activists or these are just a bunch of people screaming into the void.
But I actually would avoid that, and I would -- I'd say that this is actually an -- a larger trend and a larger indication of something that is happening within the United States that really has been on display for the last several years, at least since 2020, which is that there is an increasing anger in a in a kind of grievance politics that the American public has been articulating louder and louder and louder.
And right now, we've seen kind of spots and moments where those things have erupted. We've seen it with the George Floyd protests. We saw it with January 6th and the kind of -- attempt to overthrow the 2020 election results. But we're also seeing it now with constituents who are very, very angry.
And they are very specifically angry because the things that they articulated during the 2024 election that matter to them, their Medicare, their Social Security, the cost of living, how things felt -- those things haven't changed for the better in the last couple of months.
They have actually gotten worse. Those are showing up in polls, but they're also showing up in those people who are screaming into the void at town halls and that no one wants to listen to. Somebody's going to listen to them.
BERMAN: Dan, can you harness that? Is this a strategy?
KOH: Well, look. I think what's interesting is, obviously, the approval ratings, as I'm sure Scott would remind me if I didn't mention, for Democrats are not where we need to be. But if you actually look at the issues that matter to Democrats, they're actually quite popular. So, I would argue that instead of just talking about all the things that we want to fight Trump on, which we should, let's talk just as much about what we're fighting for.
Let's talk about, the work that the pro act is doing to make, union families empowered and to put food on the table. Let's talk about renegotiating more Medicare prescription drug prices, so that people, can afford their health care. There -- let's talk about childcare costs and how much it costs for every single -- there's no American in this country thinks that childcare costs are cheap.
[22:50:00] These are incredibly popular issues. These are things that Democrats are championing and we need to be championing those to the American people every single day.
BERMAN: What about the empty chairs?
KOH: Look, I think that there's a whole discussion that needs to be had. That's one -- that's one aspect of this discussion. But I think the larger point is we need to talk about what we stand for and not just what we stand against.
JENNINGS: Dan -- Dan knows how ridiculous these people look. I mean, they're -- these are unhinged, angry Democrats who usually gather online. Now, they're gathering in person to scream at empty chairs about this, that, or the other. But it's not just the Republicans.
I mean, Chuck Schumer couldn't even have his own book tour event the other day because he's afraid of his own people. Not only is it just screaming into a void, it's gone beyond that. Firebombing of Tesla dealerships, keying of cars, vandalism.
There are a lot of very unhinged, angry progressives out there who are having trouble controlling their emotions, and yes, you're right, at a time when the Democratic Party is at a super low point, the lowest it has been in decades, the face of the party are people screaming at chairs and other people holding up blue cards. That that is what people know about Democrats right now. The party will never recover if this is -- if this is the image they're portraying to the American people.
BORELLI: I agree with Scott. I feel like, to quote, Zoolander, "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills" because the Democratic Party on one hand can't seem to figure out how to get the poll numbers right. But on the other hand, they're actually organizing. And I'm saying they're organizing because you heard Chuck Schumer himself said go out and protest -- protest some of these town halls. That's what he said.
So, these are organized events by Democratic Party members, whether it's sponsored by the congressman or just like this group did where they've held their own event absent the member of congress. But they're organized events. They're not there to actually meet with the member of congress and get a -- a genuine dialogue. They're there to get the viral moment.
BERMAN: Well, the member of congress is not there, to be fair.
BORELLI: Even when -- when they're there, they're there to get the viral moment. They're not there to have a genuine dialogue. They're there to just raise a ruckus, and just show the world they're protesting, which is their right to do. But the Republican member of congress doesn't have to be a party to their own dopey viral moment.
RIGUEUR: But I -- I --
CROSS: That's -- I think it's a misrepresentation of what happened because it's not -- BORELLI: But Chuck Schumer said do this.
CROSS: Well, what you're saying is a misrepresentation of what happened. And I'm so happy to hear you, Scott, be so against vandalism because, certainly, the January 6th people completely vandalized not only our -- our capital, but also this --
JENNINGS: Opposed to -- opposed to today?
CROSS: Yeah. Good. I'm glad to hear that because not a lot of people on your side of the aisle do. But I think these are not just Democrats -- I know these are not just Democratic voters. These are actually a lot of Republican voters. And respect to my sister Leah here because --
JENNINGS: They're not. They're not Republicans.
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: They're not. A hundred percent false.
BORELLI: If you can find me -- I'll give you every dollar in my pocket if you find me one Republican in --
CROSS: Wait, well, let's -- we have to agree -- let me -- for professional courtesy, let me finish my point. They are.
JENNINGS: No.
CROSS: According to the reporting, they are.
JENNINGS: No.
CROSS: According to videos, they are.
JENNINGS: No.
CROSS: You're saying don't believe your eyes and ears. I have seen with my eyes and ears.
JENNINGS: Who -- would know more about Republicans? Me or you? They are not Republicans in that meeting.
CROSS: Well, between the two of us, who's more trustworthy? I would argue me. I'm not here defending this ridiculous administration, but I would can I can I just say though quickly? I would not conflate January 6th protesters with George Floyd protest.
I think that is completely different. These were people who were trying to overthrow elections. I think there was a legitimate protest. The Republican voters who do exist, who are there, to confront their --
JENNINGS: They're not, they're not. They're literally not.
CROSS: They are. They are. We can agree on basic facts. JENNINGS: No way, literally not.
CROSS: They are. They are.
BORELLI: I'll give you a hundred bucks right now.
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: I would say that they - I would -
(CROSSTALK)
CROSS: -- If I can have the professional conversation, my point, I would --can I --
BERMAN: I want to give the professor the last word here, end on academia.
CROSS: Can I finish my quick point? I just think the people who voted for this and are unhappy with it, of which there are plenty people --
JENNINGS: They are not. There are none.
CROSS: Okay. There are plenty people -- there are plenty of people who are not happy with this. I do feel a certain sense of live in it and sit in it because you all did the effing around, and we are doing the finding out. So I'm not -- I don't have any a lot of empathy for --
RIGUEUR: And I want to make -- I just want to make a pullback and look at -- look at a couple of past things, right? When the Tea Party first started, there was a lot of push and there was a lot of argument that this was just spectacle, that these were organized protests.
We also know that they were well funded protests, but they were still grassroot protests, and they were protests that I think, that the politicians on both sides of the aisles took wrongly to their detriment, right? There was a two-party revolution in congress in 2010. Those are real and measurable impacts.
People are angry. There is, I mean, polling data, we can call it spectacle. We can call them paid protesters, whatever. The numbers are not lying right now. The American people are very angry. They are very angry about Elon Musk. They are very angry about cause, what they feel are recklessness and kind of a -- a dismissal of -- of DOGE right now.
There is a -- a real, I think, understanding from the American people that there is a kind of temperament. I mean, if you listen to some of the things that people are saying at these town halls, don't just dismiss them. Listen to them. Listen to the ones at the Democratic count town halls.
If you don't want to listen to the Republicans, Ayanna Pressley had one the other day that was really quite remarkable where people are talking about losing their livelihoods. They're saying, I can't afford to live in America. They are losing the idea of the American dream, and Trump's austerity programs and policies are not helping. So, they are some of them are feeling buyer's remorse, but also there is a real anger at both political parties and the political system for failing the American people.
[22:55:07]
BERMAN: All right. Thank you all very much for all of that filling the chairs. No empty chairs here. Much more on the breaking news. A stunning breach involving top Trump officials and war plans. "Laura Coates Live" is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:59:58]
LAURA COATES, CNN ANCHOR: Well, tonight, a Trump administration group chat fiasco unravels as we speak. This after a journalist says that he got texted, get this, secret war plan.
