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Brendan Banfield Trial Continues; DOJ Planning to Subpoena Minnesota Attorney General?; Trump Marks One Year in Office. Aired 1- 1:30p ET

Aired January 20, 2026 - 13:00   ET

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

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Hello. I'm Brianna Keilar, with Erica Hill in for Boris today, here in Washington.

And we're standing by for breaking news, because President Trump moments from now is set to be at the White House press briefing as he marks one year back in office.

ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: Now, so far today, we have heard from the president several times on social media, taking aim at Democrats, the unrest in Minnesota, also NATO on his TRUTH Social account, all of this just hours after he also posted private messages with world leaders about Greenland.

CNN's Kristen Holmes is standing by in the White House Briefing Room for us.

So do we know more we can expect to hear from the president later?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Erica, if this packet is an indication, this is what the White House left on some of the reporters' seats here, he's going to go over what the last year was and use this as an opportunity to highlight what he believes the administration's greatest accomplishments were.

And this says right here, "365 wins in 365 days. President Trump's return marks a new era of success and prosperity." Now, one of the things to keep in mind here is President Trump has always believed that he is his own best messenger. So it's not that surprising that he would want to speak to the press directly to go over what he believes are these great accomplishments over the last year.

But there are a lot of questions one year in, one on domestic policy. We have all seen the most recent polling that shows that the majority of Americans are unsatisfied with the first year. And on top of that, specifically his handling of the economy, a key issue that he ran on and, if you ask some of his closest advisers, the issue that brought him to the White House. This idea of fixing the economy, a year in, many people still feel as though it's gotten worse or is exactly the same, that their pennies are pinched. Now, of course, there are also an entire other part of this, which is our foreign policy.

All of this is happening, President Trump standing here today, as we know that these tensions are escalating with our European allies, President Trump going to Davos later today to sit down or be around these world leaders, who are essentially pushing back on him over his strategy on Greenland.

And there are a lot of questions about that strategy. What is he willing to do? And one of the things you noted, he's been posting on TRUTH Social. One of the things he did was he reposted something that essentially said that China and Russia were just boogeymen, but that the real enemy was the U.N. and NATO.

So, a lot of questions on those relationships, on our relationships abroad, particularly as he heads to Davos, and one year into his presidency.

HILL: Absolutely.

When it comes to Greenland, right ahead of him arriving there in Davos, where do things stand at this moment?

HOLMES: Well, at this point, he is not walking down from these ramped-up escalated threats.

I mean, there are a lot of questions as to if there is anything our European allies can do or offer to President Trump to alleviate this kind of request that he has said is a security issue to try and meet in the middle here, given the fact that we have heard pushback from almost all of these European leaders, saying that Greenland is not for sale, that it is part of Denmark.

But that is not toning down any of his rhetoric. And there are a lot of questions, even among administration officials and allies of President Trump, of just how far he is willing to go here. Most of them do not believe that he would actually take this to a military escalation, despite the fact that he himself is not ruling that out.

But that leaves the question, how far is he willing to take this? And, also, why not more conversations about expanding the United States military presence in Greenland? Why are we just fixated on this idea of owning Greenland? All things that are likely to come up today in the briefing.

KEILAR: All right, Kristen. And stay -- stand by for us, if you will. We're obviously going to be right back there in that room, in the Press Briefing Room, as soon as the briefing begins. And we are expecting President Trump to show up there.

Kristen, actually, I do want to bring you back in. I wonder how the White House is sort of seeing this moment as the president is going a little bit scorched earth here with the folks who are supposed to be his friends. Tweeting out private conversations between world leaders who are supposed to be allies is quite an affront. I don't think that's anything that an Emmanuel Macron would expect.

And I wonder how they are seeing this, as a lot of observers here in the U.S., people overseas -- you hear warnings coming from the leader of Canada talking about this reorientation of the world order. And this is really a huge data point along that.

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HOLMES: Yes, I think there are a lot of different concerns within the White House.

One is, if you're actually talking to these administration officials, yes, they are listening to President Trump, they are supporting President Trump, but no one wants to get into a situation in which we have completely alienated all of our allies and we're sending U.S. troops into Greenland.

And that is pretty clear across the board, again, likely why, when I'm talking to these various allies, people who are in touch with the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, as well as with Trump administration officials, they are saying they still believe that this is all posturing when it comes to Greenland.

But, again, how far are you willing to take this threat, posting these messages? Now, of course, we saw that President Trump's messages with another leader had been posted before that, which is likely what gave him the idea to start putting his text messages up with Emmanuel Macron.

In that message, he was talking to the head of Norway, as well as Denmark, and said, essentially, that because Norway hadn't given him the Nobel Peace Prize, he was no longer going to be thinking about peace only as an option when it came to Greenland, although he said it would still be predominant.

Unclear what the relationship is there. Of course, we're talking about Greenland and Denmark, which is in charge of Greenland. Norway is not. And also it is an independent commission, not the government of Norway, that awards the Nobel Peace Prize.

But there are -- again, there's a lot going on here, and particularly when you're talking to Republicans up on the Hill, which I was on the phone with one lawmaker earlier today, they say that they believe this is posturing, but they also add the caveat that they hope that this is posturing, that he wouldn't go any further than this.

But, of course, it is President Trump, and he has been known to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it.

KEILAR: Certainly. An incredibly efficient fact-check there, by the way.

Kristen Holmes, stand by for us there in the Briefing Room, if you would, as we wait for President Trump. We're going to bring in CNN political commentator and the host of CNN's "SMERCONISH," Michael Smerconish.

Michael, how are you seeing this moment, Trump in the White House for one year, as he is really thumbing his nose at American allies?

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's all head- spinning. I mean, it's very, very hard just to -- we all do this for a living. I deliver a three-hour radio program each and every day. I sometimes yearn for the evergreen file.

The evergreen file was that file you would reach for when it was a really slow news cycle and you weren't sure what you were going to discuss on any particular day. I haven't reached for the evergreen file, I feel like, in a decade, largely because it's President Trump who has dominated the news even when he wasn't in office.

KEILAR: Yes, I think we share that feeling. And I think a lot of journalists do.

This sharing of private messages with -- that he's had with European leaders, I do wonder what you think of that and how that could affect interactions in the future, these leaders knowing that whatever they say to him is going to potentially end up out there.

SMERCONISH: Brianna, my feeling -- I'm not condoning it, by the way. It doesn't seem like it's an effective way to maintain your friendships.

But I have to believe that they probably that -- Emmanuel Macron already knew that there was a risk that if you put that in writing that President Trump might allow it to see the light of day.

But when you add up the number of interactions that he's having with friends before he even departs for Davos, whether it's Macron in a way that you have discussed, whether it's Keir Starmer and the criticism of giving away the isles in the Indian Ocean, whether it's the fact that Carney in Canada is contemplating some type of participation in NATO maneuvers on Greenland, I mean, it's really shocking.

Maybe it's all deliberate on his part to create and engender this chaos so that he gets over there and gets the deal that he wants. Last thought for me from now is that I appreciated David Sanger's assessment, a good friend of ours here on CNN, that was published in "The Times" today, explaining that most of what President Trump wants for Greenland, he can already have, I didn't fully appreciate, by virtue of a treaty that was signed by Harry Truman in the early 1950s.

Instead, I think largely he doesn't want to be a tenant. He wants to be a landlord, to put it in the language that the president would most understand, because a lot of these things are salvageable and doable.

KEILAR: Yes, and that's what the foreign minister of Denmark was saying last week exactly, which is the objectives of the administration, of the president are easily achievable by the agreements that have been in place for decades and decades. And yet, as you point out, that is really not enough for President

Trump. So I do wonder what you think NATO might be able to do to appease Trump without giving him what he wants, which, quite frankly, they can't.

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SMERCONISH: It would seem a deal-breaker if he's insistent on taking possession of Greenland and having, I mean, to put it in a commercial sense, naming rights, because that seems like it's something that the Danes are absolutely unwilling to do.

And I don't think that it's a matter that NATO's disposal in any event. But you have to worry about the solidarity of this relationship that's gone on for 70 years, meaning our NATO alliance. I don't know. I haven't been this interested in the World Economic Forum and what's about to play itself out in Davos like I am this time.

KEILAR: Yes, such a good point.

As we are hitting this one-year mark, I do wonder what you think the big takeaways are, what the president's successes, what his losses are over the past year, and how he's defined this year in a way he didn't in his first term.

SMERCONISH: Well, going in -- so, headed into the midterm election, which is a number of months away, the way that I look at it is that Republicans -- this is not rocket science to me.

Republicans, based on all the polling data, are on defense in a major way, attributable to the fact that the White House has lost the support of a constituency that I pay close attention to, which are independents. In that most recent CNN data, where the job approval overall was at 39 percent, it was 10 points less for independents.

Democrats are where they were before. They don't like them. They wish he weren't the president. Interestingly, the MAGA base, still nine of 10 of those who voted for him would do so again tomorrow. So it's the I's among us, which are a growing constituency, with whom he's lost favor.

KEILAR: Can I ask you how you see that mattering? Because this is obviously his last term. Certainly, he will have to think about his legacy as part of, I guess, the Republican Party or just in politics in general.

But if he has lost people, but he used their votes in order to achieve what he wanted to achieve, why is that something that should matter to him?

SMERCONISH: Because there are three more years on the clock for him.

And for this first year, he's gotten a hell of a lot done. You may not agree with how he's gotten it done or what he's gotten done, but on a productivity level, you would have to say that he's been a very consequential president already in this one year. He's also had the benefit of both houses of Congress.

And it looks, I will say, highly unlikely that will continue when this cycle ends. So now he's looking at the final two years without control of the House of Representatives, in all likelihood. I think that changes dynamics. He's done a lot through executive order. A lot of it has been challenged.

But he's also been able to do things by virtue of having control of both houses. And I think that's probably on borrowed time. I mean, although I say that the people who voted for him would vote for him again tomorrow, I don't think that that popularity is transferable.

I can't think of an instance, a cycle since the president has been on the scene where that's really been the case. If he himself were running, he'd be in a much better position in the midterm election. But he's not. And I don't think that the populist appeal that he has is transferable to Republicans who are seeking House seats.

KEILAR: Yes, very interesting point.

Michael, always great to get your perspective. Michael Smerconish, thank you.

SMERCONISH: Thank you.

KEILAR: All right, we are watching, as you can see, the White House Press Briefing Room. We will go back to it as soon as this briefing begins and President Trump, who will be there at the briefing, begins to speak.

We will be right back after a quick break. Do stay with us. This is imminent.

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HILL: We are following breaking developments out of Minnesota. We're going to get those in just a moment, but you're seeing live pictures here of the White House Briefing Room. We are waiting on that briefing.

President Trump plans to join. This, of course, today, marks one year since he resumed office there for his second term. So we will be bringing you that live when it does happen.

As we wait, though, for that briefing at the White House, as I noted, there are breaking developments out of Minnesota, including a new escalation in the face-off between local authorities and federal agents surging to the state as part of President Trump's crackdown on immigration.

Two sources telling CNN the Justice Department is now planning to subpoena Minnesota's attorney general, Keith Ellison, in a criminal investigation. So this would mark the third Democratic official in the state who is allegedly facing this level of federal scrutiny, sources previously telling CNN that Minnesota's Governor Tim Walz and the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, are also expected to receive subpoenas.

Joining me now, CNN senior analyst Elie Honig.

When it comes too what we have heard too, Elie, I should note, in relation to Governor Walz and Mayor Frey, Mayor Frey telling Jake Tapper over the weekend he still has no indication, at least on Sunday, of what this criminal investigation could entail.

If a subpoena is now issued, what does that change in terms of what we could know?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Erica, you said the exact word I was going to say, which is escalation.

So the first thing is, if these subpoenas have actually been issued, that confirms that DOJ is in fact criminally investigating these three individuals, as has been reported. And I should note, by the way, it is longstanding prosecutorial practice at the DOJ that you do not subpoena someone who you see as a potential target or subject of an investigation.

You don't subpoena someone who you believe you might be likely to charge, and that's out of respect for that person's Fifth Amendment rights. You don't serve as a subpoena requiring a person to testify if they might end up on the other side of a criminal indictment.

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However, I can't speak for this DOJ and whether they're observing that common limitation. But with respect to all three of these people, once they get a subpoena, they really have three options. One, they can testify. They can go in. They can produce whatever documents. They can go into the grand jury and say what they have to say.

Two, they do have the right to invoke the Fifth to protect their interests. People do that. It doesn't necessarily mean they're guilty. It just means that they fear their words will be used against them. And, three, and this is what I think is most likely, they can challenge it. They can go to the courts and say, this subpoena is improper. It's overbroad. It relates to an invalid investigation.

But it's really hard to get a subpoena quashed, as we say. It's really hard for somebody who receives a subpoena to get a court to throw it out, but those are the three options.

HILL: It is fascinating, as you point out that this is not typically the way things would happen, certainly not during your time as a federal prosecutor, but I guess we add that to the list of things that are a little bit different with this DOJ under Pam Bondi.

I also wanted to get your take on this. So the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, confirming that the DOJ is now looking into the protesters who entered a church in St. Paul over the weekend. Here's how he framed it. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TODD BLANCHE, U.S. DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: And we are absolutely investigating. Our Civil Rights Unit has already sent experts out to Minneapolis today.

The Civil Rights Unit, the U.S. attorney's office, the FBI, DHS is investigating this. It's a crime, and so they will face a jury. If they're convicted, they will go to prison.

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HILL: Blanche, as you just heard, framing this as a civil rights violation.

Protesters who were there have said they were exercising their right to free speech. How do you see this shaping up? Is this the clash of First Amendment rights, Elie?

HONIG: I don't think it's actually a class of First Amendment rights because there is a statute, there's actually two federal statutes that say you cannot intentionally deprive somebody of their right to exercise free religion.

That's a First Amendment right. On the other side, though, I have heard journalists say, well, there's a First Amendment right to demonstrate, to protest. Yes, but not inside a private building, not inside a private church, anymore than someone could come into your or my private home and demonstrate and still be protected by the First Amendment.

So there are federal crimes that relate to this conduct. However, I think DOJ, again, in the ordinary course, would ask itself the sort of prudential questions. Is this a case worth prosecuting? What was the length of the interruption? Was anyone injured? Was there any violence involved?

And I think here all those answers are no. So, technically, could we have a crime on our hands? Yes. And I should note it's probably a misdemeanor under the federal laws, which means the max penalty is one year, still serious, but not as serious as a felony.

But I think DOJ needs to ask, first of all, is this a crime? I think it probably does meet the definition. But then the secondary question is, is it necessary that we prosecute it? And Todd Blanche certainly seems to have made up his mind on that second question.

HILL: Yes, he seems very clear on that. The government also, Elie, is appealing, when we're talking about Minnesota, both this recent ruling from a judge that came down on Friday that dictates specifically how federal agents are interacting with protesters, so noting, among other things, that federal agents cannot arrest them or use pepper spray if they are protesting peacefully.

So that's being appealed now and also the state's efforts to have ICE agents removed from Minnesota. How would you assess those appeals? HONIG: So there are actually a couple different cases. This appeal

relates to a lawsuit brought by six protesters.

The part of the judge's decision that's being appealed is really fairly uncontroversial. It doesn't really accomplish much. It's just the judge saying, you can't use physical force, you can't detain, you can't pepper spray people who are demonstrating peacefully and unobstructively.

Well, that's the law anyway. And I think the reason DOJ is appealing is because they are naturally allergic to, they are naturally going to strike back against any judge trying to tell DOJ in a forward-looking manner here's what your agents can and cannot do. I don't think they like that type of operational input from judges.

So that appeal will go forward. There's a separate lawsuit seeking to essentially throw ICE or throw the surged ICE agents out of Minnesota. That has thus far not succeeded. A judge, the same judge actually, in both cases, that judge refused to throw ICE out of Minnesota. And I don't think there's any legal basis for a judge to outright bar ICE from conducting federal law enforcement in Minnesota.

It wouldn't surprise me if this judge continues to say, yes, but you have to do so within constitutional parameters, but she's not throwing them out.

HILL: Elie, always appreciate it. Thank you, my friend.

HONIG: Thanks, Erica.

HILL: So we are, of course, still standing by, live pictures here of the White House Briefing Room. We are waiting for President Trump to speak there any moment.

We're going to fit in a quick break here as we wait for those remarks. Stay with us.

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KEILAR: We are waiting right now for the White House press briefing to begin. President Trump is going to be there today on this one-year anniversary of his second term in office. We will bring that to you as soon as it gets under way and he begins speaking.

But, moments from now, testimony is set to resume in week two of Brendan Banfield's double murder trial. The Virginia father is accused of killing two people, including his wife, after prosecutors say he planned the murders with his mistress, who was the family's au pair. His alleged co-conspirator pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in exchange for her testimony against Brendan Banfield.

CNN correspondent Jean Casarez is with us now on this story.

And, Jean, we heard expert testimony from a forensic analyst on bloodstain patterns. What are we learning so far?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Very serious day in that courtroom, because it's all about blood spatter, blood castoff. And the core issue is whether Brendan Banfield is the one that stabbed his wife to death.