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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Judge Says, Trump Sought To Manipulate The Judicial Process With IRS Lawsuit; One Person Killed In ICE-Involved Shooting In Maine; Trump Wants To Charge Toll On Ships Crossing The Strait Of Hormuz; Boosie Sues Political Operatives Over Alleged Pardon Promises. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired July 13, 2026 - 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 VIDEOTAPE)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST (voice over): Tonight, a federal judge slams Trump's IRS lawsuit and slush fund for his allies, a slap on the wrist for his attorneys, including the man tapped to be the next attorney general.
Plus, protests in Maine after ICE shoots and kills another man.
SEN. ANGUS KING (I-ME): We need to verify that this investigation will be thorough and transparent.
PHILLIP: DHS now confirms the victim wasn't even the target.
And U.S. guardians of the gate?
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: We'll call it the guardian angel of the strait, and we should be reimbursed for that.
PHILLIP: And the memo of understanding?
TRUMP: When you're dealing with sleazebags, it don't mean much.
PHILLIP: Is the U.S. heading toward a forever war in Iran?
Live at the table, Adam Mockler, Emily Austin, Horace Cooper, and Ashley Allison.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening. I'm Abby Phillip in New York.
Tonight, self-dealing, that's what a judge is calling Donald Trump's controversial lawsuit against the IRS, that included a now defunct $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund for his allies. In a scathing order, Judge Kathleen Williams accused the Justice Department of abdicating its responsibility to represent the interests of the United States, disregarding DOJ policies, and potentially the law in reaching this settlement agreement.
Judge Williams found that Trump's lawyers acted in bad faith, and that the lawsuit was collusive, improper, and was brought to manipulate the judicial process. The judge says that she was referring to -- referring the attorney that brought the case to the Florida State Bar for potential disciplinary action, and she's ordered her opinion to be submitted to the New York State Bar, which is already reviewing an ethics complaint against Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Now, Blanche once served as Trump's personal attorney, and he was the sole signatory on an addendum to the deal that forever banned the IRS from investigating past tax matters related to Trump and his entire family. On Wednesday, Blanche is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a confirmation hearing, as he seeks to become the permanent head of the DOJ.
Elie Honig is here with us in our fifth seat. But before we open it up to the table here, I want to invite you at home to join the debate. Go to cnn.com/abby. Weigh in. We'll get to some of your comments throughout the show.
Elie, how extraordinary is it for a judge to basically accuse the president and his government of colluding with one another?
ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: This is really an extraordinary ruling. I mean, the judge just pops off on the page about this. She is furious at the way this went down. And the bottom line holding here is this was a fix. This was collusive.
When you have a lawsuit, one of the base requirements is it has to be an actual lawsuit between two parties who are actually adverse to one another, Mockler versus Honig, and we really have a dispute that we want to work out. In this case, it was essentially Donald J. Trump, private citizen, versus Donald J. Trump's IRS, and the judge finds that she was misled, and that this whole thing was essentially a setup and a scheme to put the veil of legitimacy on the slush fund and the immunity deal that resulted. And so now this judge is recommending and imposing really serious sanctions.
PHILLIP: Now, Horace, what is the counterargument, if any, against that? Because it seems very much that Trump knew when he filed this case earlier in the year that he was running the DOJ. He believes very much that there is no such thing as an independent DOJ and that that DOJ would then create a fund that meets his goals. What's the counterargument?
HORACE COOPER, CHAIRMAN, PROJECT 21: Okay. If we were sitting in my constitutional law class, this judge would probably get a gentleman D because the judge instead of focusing on the issues, which were the separation of powers issues, and the need for there to be an active dispute between legitimate parties, the judge wanted to look at the details of the settlement, and yet the settlements have always been something that the judges don't opine about.
PHILLIP: But you just said something that is kind of contradicted by the actual facts. [22:05:02]
The judge said this was not an adverse lawsuit. What's the argument that it was an adverse lawsuit?
COOPER: No. The judge held no such hearing to make such a finding. The judge held no such hearing to decide that one of the judges -- excuse me, one of the other attorneys needed to be referred. This was a jump to the conclusion.
PHILLIP: But are these adverse -- are these adverse parties, Horace?
COOPER: You could have written --
PHILLIP: Horace, are these adverse parties?
COOPER: Abby --
PHILLIP: Is the president and his own government that he has asserted he controls the DOJ fully, are they adverse to one another?
COOPER: If she wanted to stay --
PHILLIP: I'm asking you that --
COOPER: I'm telling you, if she --
PHILLIP: You're a constitutional attorney, as you keep telling me. What's the judgment of it?
COOPER: -- stayed within the contours of the law, she could have gotten a ruling that wouldn't be ridiculous (ph).
PHILLIP: Horace, you have yet to answer my question. Are they adverse?
COOPER: I'm telling you that what is the lead story tonight is about a ruling by a judge that didn't stay in that judge's lane.
ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I'm going to say asked and unanswered. As a judge would say, asked and unanswered by the court.
PHILLIP: I would say I didn't hear an answer to that question.
ALLISON: No.
HONIG: If you look at the ruling, the judge does not say, I just find that this settlement is so outrageous it cannot stand. That is not the basis of the ruling. Hold on. The basis of the ruling is exactly what we've been talking about. These were not genuinely adversary parties.
You said they didn't hold a hearing, but the judge took briefings. The judge took factual submissions from both sides and said, basically, what I'm being told here by the plaintiff and defendant, but the people on both sides of this case, is nonsense, and is unreliable, and I discredit it, and that's what judges do.
COOPER: She said that she didn't hear from the parties, and she took the fact that they failed to provide answers as a --
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Just to be clear, do you just -- you also just acknowledged she asked for the information. She was not provided with it. So, the idea that she did --
COOPER: She's a judge.
PHILLIP: Yes. Hold on. The idea that she did not -- that she was provided information that countered that viewpoint is not -- you just acknowledged this.
(CROSSTALKS)
Go ahead, Ashley.
ALLISON: You said that if they were in your law class. Well, I have been in law classes before, and law professors often pose a fact pattern, and then they start to distort. So, perhaps if you want to submit that the judge did not have a hearing and all, that stuff, can you answer Abby's question? Like in a different fact pattern, do you feel like they were both adverse parties? Not what the judge did, but from your constitutional, legal, rigorous brain, were they adverse parties?
COOPER: What I said from the beginning is if the judge had stayed on the facts --
ALLISON: That's not the question. That would not land --
COOPER: You won't let me answer.
ALLISON: -- the Socratic method.
COOPER: You won't let me answer.
(CROSSTALKS)
PHILLIP: Hold on, Horace. If you actually answer, I'll let you finish. But if you don't answer, we're moving on to Emily. Go ahead.
COOPER: If the judge had simply said that we don't have adverse parties --
ALLISON: Horace, you would fail your own class.
PHILLIP: Go ahead, Emily.
EMILY AUSTIN, PODCAST HOST, THE EMILY AUSTIN SHOW: Okay, I'm going to agree with you.
PHILLIP: Go ahead, Emily.
AUSTIN: I have a different reason. I feel like we're just still all missing the point here. I think what you did say correctly was that this isn't the point of the story. I will never understand how Trump was wronged. And, yes, the guy's sitting in jail, I'm aware. But the whole point of this was to get justice. And the fact that Trump is now being painted -- what do they say? They're acting in bad faith. I just feel like that's very convenient for a judge to deem, okay, they're acting in bad faith.
And what I find insane that we're not talking about is now this judge is basically penalizing the lawyer. He cannot practice law for the next year in South Florida because he's representing Trump out of what she has deemed as bad faith. And I just feel like that's exactly what the point of Trump's fund is. This is weaponization.
PHILLIP: Well, to answer that, the, here's what the judge said in her ruling. She said, the nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the parties and counsel from its filing make it plain that this was an attempt to use the court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the president and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law.
So, that's why they're -- I mean, to answer your question, I mean, she's basically saying, yes, you get sanctioned because you can't use the court system as a smokescreen for allocating billions of dollars that Congress did not appropriate, and, B, for granting immunity that she later says in this case is not even legal. It's not even legal.
AUSTIN: I want to talk about both. I want to talk about that. You can debate the immunity for the family. That's fair game, but we're talking about Trump's fund. When I came on last time you guys called it the slush fund. Whatever it is. This was a fund to help people who have been weaponized by the government bipartisanly.
That is a good thing. This framing that it's some bad thing that Trump is benefiting from, he's not pocketing the money. He's not pocketing the money. And I feel like we're rebranding it as if it's something negative.
HONIG: Trump was --
AUSTIN: Oh, by the way, no, sorry. I want to speak to his children for a minute.
[22:10:00]
When they accused Trump of colluding with Russia, his family suffered. They suffered the consequences of that. They were de-banked. They were de-banked because they were affiliated with him.
ALLISON: I think they're doing okay now.
AUSTIN: I think he's protecting his family from the weaponization of the government.
PHILLIP: Yes.
(CROSSTALKS) PHILLIP: Hold on, Horce.
HONIG: Let's stick with the facts here.
PHILLIP: I'm going to let Elie and --
HONIG: Donald Trump was wronged by the illegal leaking of his tax returns. That person was prosecuted and imprisoned, like you said, and he probably would've been entitled to some redress from the government. He was wrong. He puts in a lawsuit for how much? Do you remember?
COOPER: That's my point.
PHILLIP: 10 -- hold on. Hold on, $10 billion --
PHILLIP: Hold on Horace.
HONIG: I'm talking about the facts of the case.
PHILLIP: We're answering actual questions that are asked --
HONIG: $10 billion, with a B, and then the settlement of this I'm owed $10 billion is what we're going to do to settle what was done to me is give out $1.776 billion to anyone who comes along and claims weaponization, including violent January 6th rioters. Not the basis of the judge's opinion, but that's where this whole thing comes from.
PHILLIP: All right. Adam -- go ahead, Adam.
COOPER: That's what she had said though. That's my problem.
ADAM MOCKLER, YOUTUBE HOST, THE ADAM MOCKLER SHOW: Okay, this is what terrifies me about the direction of this country. I don't think there is anything Trump could have done that these two conservatives wouldn't be defending with their fullest heart. Absolutely.
AUSTIN: Oh, that's not true. One thing you said that means that, first of all --
MOCKLER: Absolutely.
AUSTIN: -- you're jumping to conclusions on this show. I've condemned him as many times as I feel like it. And that was the stupidest answer I've ever heard in my life. We're discussing facts, and you're like, they're not going to condemn Trump.
MOCKLER: Let me ask you, do you condemn Trump for pumping Palantir after buying its stock? Do you condemn Trump for getting a Qatari jet and then using it to get a deal with Qatar? Do you condemn any of this? Do you condemn Donald Trump getting a cryptocurrency, having UAE donate $2 billion to that cryptocurrency and give them chips?
AUSTIN: First of all, I didn't even know about the Palantir thing.
MOCKLER: So, you don't know about it? AUSTIN: I want to read the facts before I take your judgment.
MOCKLER: You won't condemn any of this?
This is what I'm saying. There is an insane amount of corruption --
AUSTIN: You're not bipartisan --
MOCKLER: There is an insane amount of corruption and enrichment coming from the president right now. He is enriching himself, his friends. He is enriching the people who have broken laws on his behalf, and the people on this panel, you'll sit here and defend all of this. You couldn't condemn any of the things that I just listed. Will you condemn that? Will you condemn Donald Trump tweeting out the ticker sign for Palantir?
COOPER: I will condemn a judgment --
MOCKLER: Will you condemn him tweeting out the ticker sign of PLTR after buying a million dollars of Palantir?
AUSTIN: Well, actually, I won't, because that's really stupid.
PHILLIP: Okay.
MOCKLER: Okay. So, you guys don't condemn this?
PHILLIP: So, this is going to be an issue for Todd Blanche. He's up for confirmation. And tonight, Manu Raju was over on Capitol Hill. He talked to John Cornyn, who said he's not making any commitments. Cornyn said that he has concerns with this ruling that the judge made, and he's not making any commitments about whether he's going to support Todd Blanche.
The other thing is that they're hearing from others, including the New York Bar Association that's arguing against Todd Blanche, basically saying that he's abused the prosecutorial power of the Justice Department. He's failed to respect the constitutional rights of citizens. He's placed loyalty to Trump over everything else, among other things.
It does feel like this rule, this ruling from the judge, whether you like it or not, is coming at the exact worst time for Todd Blanche.
COOPER: You're exactly right, and I wonder about the timing of it. But let me just ask this question just quickly, and that is if, as you say, it was a breach to have released his information, couldn't you have issued a ruling that didn't offer any judgment at all about the merits the way she did?
PHILLIP: What are you talking about?
COOPER: When he's no longer president and he wants to bring this case again, we have a scathing ruling saying that it isn't meritorious.
PHILLIP: I'm not -- hold on. I'm not understanding what you're saying. Are you suggesting that you wanted this judge to rule on the rightness or wrongness of releasing his tax information?
COOPER: No, I wanted a judge to rule on the rightness or wrongness of whether there were real, legitimate litigants on both sides. And that's it.
HONIG: Okay.
COOPER: Not the other. The other has biased this case.
ALLISON: Well, do you think there were real litigants on both sides?
COOPER: I think a good argument could be made that there weren't good --
ALLISON: Were not?
COOPER: Were not. There are good arguments to be made.
But when you go further than that, you've created a bias. I have not.
HONIG: Listen.
PHILLIP: Okay, go ahead, Elie.
HONIG: I just want to say a quick thing about Todd Blanche, who I've known for 20 years, and when he was defending Donald Trump in those criminal cases, I defended Todd Blanche publicly. I said, why is everyone getting so upset about the fact that Todd Blanche, a criminal defense lawyer, is defending a criminal defendant? That's the job. He should be respected for that, okay?
Since Todd -- and I've been friends with him for two decades. Since he took this job as deputy attorney general and acting attorney general, he has completely flipped. He has completely rejected everything we knew and were taught at the Justice Department about the unvarnished truth, whether you like it or not, about respecting the awesome power of DOJ to prosecute and take away someone's liberty, about doing this job separate from politics. Todd has completely flipped. He's a different person now than I knew.
PHILLIP: We're going to let that be the last word. Elie Honig, thank you very much, as always.
Next for us, DHS breaks its silence on today's deadly ICE shooting in Maine, but what they don't say is why the officers felt that the driver was, quote, a threat to public safety.
[22:15:06]
Plus, the president says from now on, the U.S. will be known as the guardian of the Strait of Hormuz. The price for safe passage, a 20 percent toll on each ship's cargo. We're going to discuss that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: For the second time in less than a week, there's been a deadly ICE-involved shooting, but this time in Biddeford, Maine, which is about 18 miles south of Portland.
[22:20:00]
I want to warn you now that the videos we're going to show you are disturbing. Here, you can see federal agents pulling a man out of a van -- a sedan, and onto the pavement. And in another video, officers are seen providing aid to a man on the ground.
Now, authorities, they just identified this person. We'll tell you his name in just a moment. But an immigrants rights group say that he is 26 years old, he's from Colombia, who was authorized to work here in the United States, and was issued a Social Security number as well. We're also learning that the man who was killed was not actually the target of ICE operations.
About 12 hours later, DHS released its statement on the shooting. The agency says the vehicle attempted to flee the scene, and fearing for public safety, the officer fired his weapon. But a witness told the Portland Press Herald that he saw an SUV trying to ram a small white car. The witness also said that the person was bleeding profusely from the head. He told officers, I tried to stop.
DHS hasn't provided any additional information about this, but Maine Senator Angus King says that today's shooting is the result of the Trump administration's overreaching crackdown.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KING: This is a broad sweep of -- with people with a quota. They've been told they have to arrest 2,000 people a day by the White House. That's a terrible way, an instruction to give law enforcement, and that's -- this -- what happened today in Maine is a result of that kind of overarching, I think, bad faith.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: The man has just been identified as 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero. It appears that he is a father. He was in some kind of process because he was he was administered a work permit. And I think like the incident last week, this is not the person that they were going after. This is someone who appears to just have been in the area when they were conducting some other investigation. And now we're back to the same narrative that it seems like we were in -- the same cycle we were in earlier in this year in Minnesota.
MOCKLER: Yes. This is more proof that ICE in its current form is a rogue agency incompatible with the current constitutional order of the United States. We cannot live in a constitutional republic with an agency that has basically immunity to go around in masks and to murder both U.S. citizens, legal immigrants, anybody that they want.
Beyond Alex Pretti, beyond Renee Good, even beyond the cases we've seen in the past week, they use the same excuse every time. This person tried to ram me with their car. We actually had one case in Chicago with someone named Martinez, a teacher from a Chicago school. She was shot five different times after they said that she tried to ram her car. But when they got the body camera footage, the body camera footage showed the exact opposite. And then texts leaked saying, I shot five times, and she had seven holes. Like a despicable, disgusting thing coming from ICE agents.
Guess what the punishment for that ICE agent was? Nothing. He's still out on the streets. Over and over and over --
PHILLIP: So, just one, one thing that's actually notable, and it's a little bit different in this sense, because this statement from ICE does not suggest that the agent thought his life was in danger. It explicitly does not say that, which is very different from what they've used in other incidents.
And for that reason, when you -- CNN spoke to some law enforcement sources who said, every law enforcement officer in America is scratching their head trying to figure out what that means. What does it mean that he was a threat to public safety that warranted it seems like at least five shots in the windshield of that vehicle? And when you want to arrest someone, this is a good example of how to do everything wrong.
So, there is a -- there's the question of legal and illegal immigration, and then there's an issue of how law enforcement is being conducted, and whether lives are being lost in the process.
AUSTIN: Yes. I think there's definitely a lot of factors here. First and foremost, his immigration status to me does not matter at this point. Because whether he was legal or illegal, no one deserves to die. That's a fact. Now, I want to also say this agent, which we're going to find out the facts through hopefully a very thorough investigation, was 100 percent wrong. Abolish ICE is reckless, it's irresponsible --
MOCKLER: Who's saying that?
AUSTIN: -- and it's foolish. You're basically saying ICE is, whatever you said, I couldn't even listen to what you said at that point.
MOCKLER: No one at this table is saying that.
AUSTIN: Okay. It doesn't matter.
MOCKLER: Yes. But they -- wait, do you think that they're -- do you think the murder is wrong?
AUSTIN: Let me finish. You had your duration of speaking.
MOCKLER: Do you mean that murder is wrong?
AUSTIN: Yes, I just said I think the murder is wrong.
PHILLIP: Some people are saying, abolish ICE. Just to sort this out. Some people are saying, abolish ICE. Adam did not say that.
AUSTIN: Okay. Well, ICE is a rogue agency.
PHILLIP: So, go ahead.
MOCKLER: Are you fighting with someone that's not here right now or are you --
AUSTIN: No.
PHILLIP: All right. Go ahead, finish your thought.
AUSTIN: I am saying you said ICE is a rogue agency. That's me fighting with you.
MOCKLER: Wait, do you not think they're rogue?
AUSTIN: No, I actually don't.
PHILLIP: Adam, let me let her finish her thought, please.
AUSTIN: I think that Biden let millions of people in, in an open border. Now, Trump is left with that burden to try to deport millions of illegal immigrants.
Now, say that this agent was horrible. Say that there's five ICE agents that are making headlines internationally that are the worst agents in the world. Five bad eggs and tragic, yes, tragic incidents do not now invalidate the entire purpose of ICE.
[22:25:00]
MOCKLER: There is a systematic cover-up of these murders.
AUSTIN: We need ICE. I care about the Americans being killed by illegal immigrants.
MOCKLER: Wait, there is a systematic cover-up of these murders.
AUSTIN: It is not systematic.
MOCKLER: Yes, the DOJ --
AUSTIN: Every murder makes every headline for weeks straight.
MOCKLER: -- is refusing to coordinate with local investigators.
AUSTIN: And let me also finish my point, because you said your point. I have never seen this amount of resistance towards authority. We have all, I'm sure, had bad interactions with cops or agents, whatever you want to call them. You don't resist authority, and that's a thing that we only see now.
PHILLIP: First of all, you don't know that that's what happened here.
AUSTIN: I've seen enough. You mentioned Alex and Renee. You mentioned plenty of people who were -- in fact, I've said that there was --
PHILLIP: We're talking about this incident in Maine, Emily.
(CROSSTALKS)
AUSTIN: First of all, the guy had a gun. You don't -- that's already --
MOCKLER: But they took that thing off of him before they shot him. You don't know what you're talking about.
AUSTIN: Yes, and he was in radical Facebook groups.
MOCKLER: You're saying these cute talking points but you just said that because he's in a radical Facebook group that it's justified?
AUSTIN: Alex goes -- he spits on cops. He goes to protests. He even says -- Yes, he did. There's videos of him spitting on police.
MOCKLER: You are currently using talking points to justify murder.
AUSTIN: He goes to protests as a hobby. No, I'm speaking to my opinion.
MOCKLER: Do you think the Martinez case that I mentioned from Chicago was bad?
AUSTIN: I never -- I did not hear about that. If that's true, it's horrible.
MOCKLER: Wait. Do you think that the cops should be held accountable? Do you think the agents should be held accountable?
ALLISON: Emily, I think --
AUSTIN: Yes, they should. Do I think ICE should not now because ICE is a rogue agency, because that one ICE agent was messed up?
MOCKLER: Dude, they violated 100 court orders just in January. Just in January, they violated 100 court orders.
AUSTIN: How many ICE agents are there? How many ICE agents is this?
MOCKLER: I don't know. You tell me.
AUSTIN: I don't know either.
MOCKLER: Well, why would you ask me that?
AUSTIN: But you're saying that it's a rogue agency. So, you're speaking on behalf of the entire group who's trying to deport illegal immigrants.
MOCKLER: A Republican judge named Schiltz said they violated 100 court orders just in January. That is more court orders than any agency in the history of America has violated. Do you agree with ICE violating those court orders?
AUSTIN: No, ICE should not violate court orders.
MOCKLER: Okay. So, by definition, they're a rogue agency.
AUSTIN: But ICE as a whole -- you're saying ICE. ICE is an agency that was founded --
PHILLIP: All right. Let me let Emily have -- or Ashley have a word.
ALLISON: Okay.
PHILLIP: Go ahead, Ashley.
ALLISON: I hear the point about Joe Biden's immigration policy. He didn't get it right. We can concede that. And so if you're on the right and you think Joe Biden went too far to the left, I think we have to look at what happened and say Donald Trump is going too far to the right.
AUSTIN: In respect to ICE?
ALLISON: And I -- let me -- now you done told him a couple times to be quiet, now let me finish. Because in the beginning of the Trump administration, and when he was running for office, he told us he was going after violent criminals. We have seen time and time again that that is just not the case. Because the overwhelming a number of immigrants in this country are actually not violent. So, the premise in and of itself is false, but it was a helpful campaign tactic.
Now, when I used to sit at this table at the very beginning, and they would charge into apartment buildings and zip tie little kids, I was told that I was, being in Chicago, overreacting, and that they had to do it because that was what was happening then to fix Biden's problem. Okay. When then they deployed in California, and we were saying, wait a minute, the mayor doesn't want them there, the governor doesn't want them there. That feels like an overreach, we were told they have to fix Biden's problem. Okay.
And then when Renee and Pretti were murdered, we were warning people that when people go rogue, when people -- and if you don't like the word rogue, when people don't have any type of constraint, when they feel like they have the president of the United States that is saying, go do whatever, the then sitting DHS attorney saying, Kristi Noem, riding around, Bovino walking around in a Gestapo-type uniform, when you let people go too far, you get murder.
AUSTIN: What about respect to authority?
PHILLIP: So, the DHS --
ALLISON: I don't think anything that Renee did -- I will say this. I don't think anything Renee Good, I don't think anything Alex Pretti did, and any resistance to law enforcement deserves them not to be alive right now. And I would hope that we could all look at that footage and agree, but it is troubling that in America we don't.
PHILLIP: So, let me just -- hold on. Hold on.
AUSTIN: You're a professional rage baiter, and you are so immature. PHILLIP: Hold on, guys. The DHS clearly understands actually that this is problematic. A couple days ago, Tom Homan said that he was brought in to clean up the mess in Minnesota. He had to discipline immigration officers for lying about an incident with an immigrant.
Today, CNN is reporting that inside of DHS, officials have privately shared concerns, repeated instances of ICE-involved shootings will derail public sentiment about the agency as Mullin is trying to rebuild on the heel of Kristi Noem's ouster.
Markwayne Mullen came in saying the whole ballgame is trying to keep ICE out of the headlines. But when you're pushing, as Senator Angus King said, to 2,000 arrests a day, what happens is that you're increasing the likelihood that random people are going to get caught up in what they claim are targeted enforcement actions.
So, again, we can have a whole debate about how bad illegal immigration is. That's all fine. I don't think anybody is disagreeing that there has been a problem with -- Ashley just conceded that.
[22:29:58]
PHILLIP: But Horace, I'm asking you, it's about the conduct. Can we just talk for just one second about the conduct here and whether you think that this is a good look for any federal law enforcement agency?
HORACE COOPER, PROJECT 21 CHAIRMAN: No, I don't and I've never suggested that. What I have suggested is that you can't sustain the cost associated with nearly 20 million people and something absolutely has to be done. Working class and black people suffer the most.
PHILLIP: So people who committed no crimes, like the two immigrant men who were killed in the last week, like Alex Pretti and Renee Good, they're just collateral damage in trying to recruit some unknown amount of money that you say immigrants are responsible for.
COOPER: I blame Joe Biden for creating an environment where in the effort to try to address this.
PHILLIP: How are you going to blame Joe Biden for something that happened after he left office?
COOPER: See, I have relatives who can't get their kid to the hospital because it's overcrowded. They can't get treatment at the school for reading difficulties because it's overcrowded. What I am asking --
PHILLIP: I guess what I'm asking, Horace, what I'm asking you is are you suggesting that people's actual lives, right, like these people who we're talking about who are dead, those lives are an appropriate price to pay for broader societal issues?
COOPER: Why do you guys keep wanting to add these words in?
PHILLIP: No, because I asked you a question and you responded by saying, well, hospitals are overcrowded, the schools are overcrowded. I'm asking you, are the lives that are lost a price that you're willing to pay?
COOPER: We are going to keep having lives lost until we come up with a way to deal with this problem, whether it's American lives or whether it's immigrant lives. We allow a policy that is dangerous for the country.
PHILLIP: Here's the reality. As we've said many times, because it's true, immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans.
They are not more responsible for crime than your neighbor who is a native-born American. And so if you want to blame immigrants for crime, you got to actually prove it. And they've never, look, I've been sitting here waiting.
Stephen Miller goes on T.V. every day, he talks about it. There's no actual proof that immigrants are driving an increase in crime.
ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: He says it could be zero, I'm like, okay, it also should be zero deaths by ICE. Like, is that not a --
EMILY AUSTIN, PODCAST HOST, "THE EMILY AUSTIN SHOW": We can agree with that, but first of all, Abby, this narrative is illegal.
PHILLIP: Let that be the last word since we all agree on that. The President says that the U.S. is going to now keep the Strait of Hormuz secure for a price that is very different from what the administration was saying just a few months ago. We'll show you next.
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[22:35:00]
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PHILLIP: Tonight, President Trump puts a price on security. Despite not consulting them on the war that effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, Trump thinks that allies in the region should pay up if the U.S. secures safe passage for them.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (on the phone): We're going to keep the Strait, and we'll probably run it, we'll become the guardian of the Strait. Maybe we'll call it the guardian angel of the Strait. And we should be reimbursed for that.
When we do that, we're going to be reimbursed because the other nations are very wealthy, they're on our side. And we can't be expected to do that for nothing, unlike we had for many years.
You know, we guarded the Strait for 50 years more, and we never got paid for it. We just want to be reimbursed for doing all of this, for putting our people in danger.
(END VIDEO CLIP) PHILLIP: So just how much would that cost? Well, later on Truth Social, Trump said that all cargo would be charged 20 percent. Iran's foreign minister agreed, arguing whoever secures safe passage should be compensated.
He mockingly said 20 percent is too much, but Iran will be fairer with their price. But if there are some key players who disagree with the idea of charging a fee for passage through the Strait, like, for starters, Trump's own team over the last few months.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARCO RUBIO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: These are, it's an international waterway. No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That's existing international law.
J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: First of all, we believe international waterways should be free of tolls. And that's been our position. That's what you see, of course, in the 60 days of the MOU.
RUBIO: I know of no country on the planet that supports tolling or a fee for the use of the Straits.
PETE HEGSETH, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: In trying to impose a tolling system. Iran's plan, a form of international extortion, is unacceptable.
RUBIO: There is zero support -- zero support among the Gulf countries for any sort of toll or fees or anything that charges for the use of international waters. The President's made it clear that's not going to happen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Putting us now in our fifth seat is columnist and geopolitical analyst Bobby Ghosh.
Bobby, all of a sudden, we want to start charging people to go through international waterways. When you hear things like that, I mean, is this just that, I don't know, is it just incompetence? Is it just that Trump and his team are just really not on the same page? Or that Trump wants to change the status quo of how the world works?
BOBBY GHOSH, COLUMNIST, AND GEOPOLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think more than anything else, it's Trump making things up as he goes along, which is very much on point with him, which is very much part of the brand. He was asked a question, he needed to come up with an answer, and that's the one he came up with, which is pretty consistent.
[22:40:05]
Look, here's what it takes. Quite aside from 20 percent is far more than even the Iranians are charging. Those are very large tankers.
When you say 20 percent of the value of their cargo, depending on what they're carrying, let's say it's oil, let's say it's at current prices, we're talking about 70, $80 million. Iran wants to charge $2 million.
So if you're a shipping company, who would you rather pay? But anyway, that's aside. Let's set this aside.
What does it take for the United States to get into a position where it can say we are the guardians of the strait? What it takes is to have military control of both sides of those waters, which means putting boots on the ground in Iran, controlling the Iranian territory, overlooking the Straits of Hormuz, which means putting by administration's own calculations, which means putting enormous amounts of American blood and treasure into a full-fledged war.
You can't, at the one side, say we're not going to have a full-fledged war, we're not going to put American boots on the ground, and also say we are going to control the strait. That square into that circle.
PHILLIP: Yes, and as we have learned, Emily, I mean, if controlling the strait were so easy, we would have done it by now, and we have.
AUSTIN: Yes, first of all, we will agree right now. I literally think Trump made that up on the phone call. You could tell he just was having a silly talk.
ALLISON: That is wild work.
AUSTIN: I know. I also want to point out, this is just being technical here, Vance and Rubio, I'm not saying they had discussed this by any means, are talking about international waterways.
PHILLIP: They were talking specifically about the Strait of Hormuz in those clips, yes.
AUSTIN: So I laughed at this, but if I'm being completely honest, I think it's a huge threat to the entire world that Iran can just decide when or when not to open up the Strait of Hormuz.
ADAM MOCKLER, YOUTUBE HOST, "THE ADAM MOCKLER SHOW": Totally.
AUSTIN: So personally, again, as an American, I like to be on the winning side. I wouldn't mind. Second of all, I don't know why this just reminds me of the Panama Canal.
PHILLIP: I wouldn't mind why.
AUSTIN: If America controlled the strait.
But here's the thing, obviously, I think he's not being serious. I don't even think he's being serious. I'm saying, if somehow there's a tangible way that it can be done, I think that will be a massive plus for our economy.
I think most of Panama's GDP is from the Panama Canal. I mean, if we can have it, if we can have the Strait of Hormuz, you wouldn't take the Strait of Hormuz? ALLISON: Girl, yes, but how are we going to get it? We'll figure that
out. No, at this point, in all seriousness. No, I'm not saying that taking the Strait is a bad thing. What I'm saying is, at this point, in this execution of this war, it's done, it's not done. Do you actually think that there is a plan from Donald Trump to get us out of this situation?
AUSTIN: Right now, this minute?
ALLISON: Yes.
AUSTIN: Actually, yes.
ALLISON: Okay. I don't know how much you're too smart for that, Emily.
MOCKLER: Everything Emily just said should make us appreciate Obama's deal a lot more because --
AUSTIN: That's a Nazi moron.
MOCKLER: Listen, without depleting our missile stockpiles and without letting them gain control of the Strait of Hormuz, we were able to accomplish a deal. We are now 135 days into this war that was supposed to be four to six weeks.
AUSTIN: Obama's deal would be ending right now, and then our generation is in trouble.
MOCKLER: There was, 100 days ago, a tweet from Trump where he said, unconditional surrender is what we're going to get from Iran. Since then, they still have missiles, they still fund their proxies, they still have the nuclear capacity, and the regime has not been changed.
So our generation is bearing the brunt of this cost. We are bearing the brunt of this war cost, and our debt is already massive. The Obama deal did not put us into debt.
What do you mean? Can I ask you, what concession have we gotten from Iran so far? Horace, what concession have we gotten from Iran so far?
COOPER: Do you know who the biggest critics are of Obama's plan? It is the Middle East region. All of those partners sitting around, they criticize it.
MOCKLER: Wait, the partners that now have to pay $300 billion to Iran, the Gulf allies?
COOPER: No. Regardless of what they have to pay, they asked for relief from what they called a very terrible plan. So when you go around saying it was so great, and you outline it --
MOCKLER: I'm not saying it was great, but they are begging for relief right now. I'm saying it's better than this. Horace, can you name one concession we've gotten from Iran? Can you name one concession?
PHILLIP: I will say, they are not really saying a whole lot of anything right now. And also, let's just be clear, this past week has been really terrible for those allies.
Bahrain has been under fire. U.S. military facilities in Kuwait, Iran claims that they're targeting the UAE, other Gulf states. It's pretty bad right now in the region.
GHOSH: Basically, what they're saying now is make a deal with Iran. So if you want to take their point of view, then that's what --
AUSTIN: I think they're saying how much these people actually hate the Iranian --
GHOSH: It's worth going back one more step.
AUSTIN: They're just quiet because they know Trump's doing his dirty work.
PHILLIP: Hold on, Emily. Let Bobby finish his thought. They're just quiet.
GHOSH: It's worth mitigating the past. Let's look at what's happening now and in the future. There's one more point to be made.
[22:45:07]
You said, if we could take the straits, should we not take it? I'm saying no, and here's why. That's not the only strait in the world through which important shipping goes. There are lots of straits.
And if we take one, just this is a wild theory, let's assume that all the ducks line up and unicorns appear on the horizon and we take Hormuz. Who takes the straits of Malacca? Who takes the straits of --
There are dozens of straits around the world. This is not a good precedent.
The Vance and Rubio were right when they said that international waters should remain international waters. No country should control them. Not us, not Iran.
PHILLIP: Okay. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:50:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Tonight, does a Presidential pardon come with a price tag? Well, according to a new report, one rapper facing an imminent sentencing hearing found out the hard way.
NOTUS reports that rapper Boosie Badazz is taking legal action after he paid two far-right political activists and lobbyists who are themselves felons $600,000 in exchange for a pardon that never materialized. Now, Badazz is seeking to recoup half of this payment as stipulated in a contract.
And this is not an uncommon scene in the Trump administration where people are throwing a lot of money around to get pardons.
ALLISON: Come on, Boosie. How many people know this rapper? You know him?
MOCKLER: I know him.
ALLISON: Before you got the topics for tonight? And I'm sure if you heard his music, you would know him too.
Let's extract the character from this situation. It is problematic that there's an opportunity to pay someone for a presidential pardon.
The President does have the right to pardon folks, but it should not be a pay-to-play thing. I think that is extremely problematic. I think it hits a different segment of the population because it is Boosie as a hip-hop artist and that folks are engaging in this conversation about, oh, is there a pay-to-play? Is the system not?
And I actually think it does more harm to a pocket of the electorate that Trump says that he's trying to reach out to say that there are these two-tiered justice systems, that if you have enough money to get in my insider circle, then I can do something where many people have been done wrong by the justice system and will never get a political pardon or a commutation from this President.
PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, and the White House, clearly they see what's happening and they know it's kind of a problem. Because some of it is like, if you can convince Trump that Biden prosecuted you, you might be a shoo-in for a pardon. But also, according to CNN's reporting, they've tried to discourage this practice, including pausing pardons earlier this year, and they warned that anyone spending money to lobby for a pardon is wasting their funds.
Part of the reason for that is because people are spending literally millions of dollars to try to get away to a pardon with Trump.
ALLISON: Yes, I mean, this isn't just a Trump problem.
COOPER: My grandmother used to say, a fool in his money will soon be pardoned. Look, this is a Trump problem, but this problem existed before Trump. Because the President's ability is broad to issue pardons, there are people, and by the way, yes, they wear fancy suits, they're not like Jack Burkman, a felon, they cost thousands of dollars an hour to prepare your document that goes over to the Justice Department.
PHILLIP: It feels, though, that this is not about preparing documents to go to a pardon committee. This is like, hey, these guys claim that Erica Kirk supported his pardon requests, and Speaker Johnson, it's sort of like, it's basically who you know.
MOCKLER: I totally reject the idea that this problem isn't unique to Trump. Yes, this pardon power has existed, but Trump has created a pardon economy in which he's pardoned 70-plus fraudsters and raked in hundreds of millions of dollars.
I mean, my team and I actually prepared a document months ago on this. C.Z., the founder of Binance, helped Donald Trump build a crypto platform, facilitated a $2 billion investment into that platform, then was pardoned. We have Joseph Schwartz, a nursing home magnate who defrauded the federal government for $38 million, paid into Trump's campaign, then he was pardoned.
I can list dozens more. Wait, do you think Biden pardoned 70 different fraudsters?
AUSTIN: I mean, my opinion, 30 seconds. I think pardoning across the board is horrible. I don't know who started this. I know it's a very long precedent that we have set.
Nobody should be able to say, and by the way, if someone's being pardoned, it should be exactly who you're talking about. People falsely in prison, people with a maybe nonviolent crime.
I don't think anyone should be pardoned, I think people should have another chance. That's another story. And now I'm also learning governors can pardon, because Tim Walz pardoned the child rapist, and I see a problem with that. So, I don't think anyone should have the authority to be like, you're not guilty anymore.
All right. Next for us, the panel is going to react to your feedback from cnn.com/abby. We'll be right back.
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[22:55:00]
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PHILLIP: And now some viewer feedback from cnn.com/abby. One viewer says, thank God for our court system that still works to uphold our system of checks and balances. Everyone agrees?
AUSTIN: Awesome.
PHILLIP: All right, another one.
So if America's holding the straight and open for a price, how is that any different from what the Iranians are doing?
MOCKLER: Oh, I'll take this one. It is different because we're doing it 10 times higher than the Iranians were both emboldening the Iranians to do it and justifying their decision to pull the strings.
[23:00:04]
AUSTIN: You're doing a great job speaking on Iran's behalf tonight. They probably love you.
MOCKLER: Like he literally said, like the speaker of the parliament said -- COOPER: We aren't charging. The President may have said it. We aren't
actually charging.
PHILLIP: All right. We'll see about that.
All right. Thanks, guys, here in the studio.
Thank you for watching, and don't forget, you can stream my new show "Confessions and Obsessions" anytime on the CNN app. In the meantime, "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
