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Laura Coates Live
Musk Prepares For Cabinet Meeting As Mass Firings Loom; Andrew Cuomo Readies Controversial Comeback; New Revelations In Idaho College Murders Case. Aired 11p-12a ET
Aired February 25, 2025 - 23:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[23:00:00]
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Today's lunchboxes have no character, no soul, even if they have better have better insulation. So, my advice would be to bring back metal lunchboxes and that's a step in making the lunchroom and the school a better place.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: All right. And mine would be it's okay for your kids to be polite. This gentle parenting thing where you tell them they don't have to say please and thank you, that is not good, okay? Not good.
Everyone, thank you very much. Thank you for watching "NewsNight." "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
LAURA COATES, CNN HOST: Well, tonight, DOGE gets ready to hit warp speed with new mass firings. This as Elon Musk prepares for his very first cabinet meeting. Plus, Governor Andrew Cuomo set the stage for his comeback. New reporting tonight on the plans for him to return from political exile. And a major revelation in the shocking Idaho College murders that could make or break the trial. Tonight on "Laura Coates Live."
Well, President Trump and Elon Musk are charging right ahead with the newest DOGE-back directive. This time, large-scale firings. A source telling CNN the Trump administration is expected to tell government agencies to submit plans for sweeping cuts by March 13th. Yep, it's only about two weeks away. And yes, it's the day before a prospective government shutdown.
And on top of all that, we now know that Elon Musk will be at his very first cabinet meeting tomorrow at Trump's first cabinet meeting as well, even though he is, as you guessed it, not actually a cabinet member. Mass layoffs will undoubtedly be on everyone's mind, especially since the rest of Trump's cabinet has been caught pretty much off guard over that other DOGE demand.
We are talking about that "what did you do last week?" email, the one where the federal workers have been totally confused about whether they need to respond to justify their jobs or not. I mean, Trump was asked again today to try to clear up some of that confusion.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNKNOWN: Do you see it as voluntary like OPM has said or mandatory?
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Well, it's somewhat voluntary. But it's also, if you don't answer, I guess you get fired. What it really is -- what it is, do people exist?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COATES: An existential question for the masses. Makes sense, right? And the White House says about one million federal workers have responded. So, what does that mean for the hundreds of thousands who have not responded? They know they exist. Will their replies or their silence factor into these upcoming cuts? We'll have to see.
One thing we finally did see, though, today, the White House admitting who is the administrator of DOGE after being pushed on it at the press briefing time and time again. Surprise, apparently, it's not Elon Musk.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNKNOWN: Can you tell us who the administrator of DOGE is?
KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: m Again, I've been asked to answer this question. Elon Musk is overseeing DOGE. There are career officials --
LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT FOR PBS NEWSHOUR: Is he the administrator?
LEAVITT: There are -- no. Elon Musk is a special government employee, which I've also been asked and have answered that question as well.
BARRON-LOPEZ: Is he the administrator?
LEAVITT: There are career officials at DOGE. There are political appointees at DOGE. I'm not going to reveal the name of that individual from this podium. I'm happy to follow up and provide that to you. But we've been incredibly transparent about the way that DOGE is working.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COATES: Shout out to Laura Barron-Lopez for that question. A short time after that, the White House revealing Amy Gleason is the acting administrator of DOGE. She got a background in healthcare, had been working at the U.S. Digital Service before it was rebranded as DOGE. And officials did not say, though, how long she has been the acting administrator.
Now, for such incredible transparency, it did take a while to find out who's actually running DOGE, don't you think? The agency has also given no explanation for removing pretty big mistakes on its website. This, as you see, is the wall of receipts, as they're calling it. DOGE has quietly deleted the five biggest spending cuts that it claimed saved billions of dollars. And I'm not talking about small errors, no. One ice contract it listed as 8 billion, with a B, was actually for 8 million, with that M.
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Time is going to run through what DOGE has actually done and what it has not done. One thing is for sure, the DOGE team just lost a bunch of people who are refusing to help with those cuts. Twenty-one people have quit in protest. They're engineers, they're data scientists, they're project managers, and they say that Musk's team is clueless.
Joining me now from Capitol Hill, Democratic Congressman from Ohio, Congressman Greg Landsman. Congressman, good to see you. A lot happening these days. The Trump administration now expected to tell agencies to prepare for mass layoffs to come up with reorganization plans, they're saying, in just two weeks' time. How is this going to work?
[23:05:00]
What is your thought about the way DOGE is operating?
REP. GREG LANDSMAN (D-OH): Well, I am with the vas -- I think the vast majority of Americans. Certainly, I heard this back in the district in Southwest Ohio when I was home, and a lot of members did, which is there is legitimate anger. They feel like I do, that this is a hostile takeover of our federal government by Trump and this unelected tech billionaire, who gets tens of billions of dollars, tens of billions of dollars from the federal government.
He gives hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump and Republicans, and they give him the keys to everything. He's in our data, he's in the federal payment system, he is indiscriminately firing people all over the federal government, undermining critical services, and people are pissed.
And Congress, which is controlled by Republicans, has to step up. They have the constitutional responsibility to end this, to put guardrails in place to protect the American people, and so far, they haven't done it.
COATES: They're also angry, though, at Democrats, congressman, given the anger you just articulated, that there's not enough being done to serve as an effective legislative resistance to what you describe. What can you do? What can you say? I mean, you had a constituent in the town hall asking you to call Trump's actions a coup and telling the Cincinnati Enquirer, I understand it, that you need to be more confrontational.
I just want to read you a quote of what he said. He said, he's holding on to this dream of bipartisanship, which I think is somewhat foolish. Can you react to that anger?
LANDSMAN: Yeah, I understand the frustration. I'm right there, too. People are frustrated. It's important to remember exactly what's happening here. Trump and the Republicans control everything. They got the White House, they have the House, they have the Senate. They're going to determine whether or not Elon Musk is going to continue to wreak havoc on the federal government. And because the government is going to run out of money on March 14th, they're going to determine whether or not the government shuts down.
So, there's an enormous amount of frustration and angst. And I think people want to see leadership across the board. But they're really, really mad at Trump and Musk and this Republican-controlled Congress that refuses to intervene.
COATES: You know, everyone has an opinion at times like this. And one, of course, is Democratic strategist James Carville. I don't know if you saw it in "The New York Times." He had an op-ed out where he said Democrats need to -- quote -- "roll over and play dead." Essentially, just let Republicans fail. Is inaction the answer?
LANDSMAN: No, I think that Carville is making a larger point about the fact that Republicans control everything. They are responsible for all of this now. They're responsible for the economy. They're responsible for the fact that prices have gone up. They're responsible for whether or not the government stays open. They're responsible for all of it.
And so, it's important for Democrats to continue to point that out and not to do anything to get in the way of the American people appreciating or realizing what's happening here, which is you have Trump and Musk doing whatever they want without any congressional oversight because Republicans won't step up and do anything.
COATES: Do you have concerns that the American voters will assign the blame wider than just Republicans? That they will also assign it to Congress as a whole, thereby impacting your ability to try to reclaim the majority in the midterms?
LANDSMAN: I think the American people are very clear-eyed about who runs the show right now, and they will blame, as they are now, Trump and Musk and congressional Republicans who have not stepped up. You're seeing that in the polling.
I mean, the American people are not dumb. They're very smart, and they are very angry with the fact that instead of fixing the economy and lowering prices, they're doing the exact opposite. They're creating unemployment with these mass layoffs, they started the trade war, which is increasing prices, and they're about to shut the government down.
COATES: Congressman, Republicans just passed their budget blueprint with, I understand, just one defection. Democrats thought Republicans would not be able to pull this off. They did. So, now, what?
LANDSMAN: Well, now they have to actually put the details in place. But here are the top lines, and this is why this is a dumpster fire of a budget. It is a $4.5 trillion budget plan. It adds trillions of dollars to the national debt. This is a group that's saying, hey, we have to lower spending.
They're adding trillions of dollars to the national debt. They're cutting nearly a trillion dollars in people's health care. You're going to lose health care. Hundreds of thousands of people in Ohio, tens of thousands in my district are going to lose their health care if this budget passes. Also, they can pay for these ridiculous wasteful tax giveaways to billionaires and big corporations.
[23:09:57]
It is a very unpopular budget. And I'm not sure they will ultimately have the votes to pass it once people realize and they realize that it's a trillion dollars out of health care, trillions more in deficit spending. All for what? To give Elon Musk and a bunch of billionaires and big corporations more tax giveaways?
COATES: That doesn't really line up with the mandate that they often speak about. We'll see what happens. Congressman Greg Landsman, thank you for joining us this evening.
LANDSMAN: Thanks.
COATES: I want to bring in Republican strategist Lance Trover and Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross. Glad to have both of you here.
Lance, we begin with you. Why are we just now learning who the administrator is? I understand she was also supposed to be on vacation and didn't know they were going to reveal her actual name today. Why are we just now learning it's not Musk?
LANCE TROVER, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST, FORMER SPOKESPERSON FOR DOUG BURGUM'S 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: Yeah, I mean, that's a question for the White House. But I mean, to me, the way I view this is we have a president of the United States who oversees our executive branch, and so he's the one calling shots and making the decisions.
We have -- you know, we have secretaries. We have assistant secretaries and undersecretaries. That's what we have in this country. I don't know why the name didn't come out sooner. But we have the president of the United States. We turn to him. And he's the one that's making the ultimate decision for all this stuff.
COATES: Does it bother you that we don't know until now?
AMESHIA CROSS, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: It absolutely does. And I think that there is a keen play on the White House to do that. First and foremost, we know that as soon as inauguration happened, there was a conversation about Elon Musk and DOGE. There was also the conversation about a man who is now running for governor of an entirely different state deciding that he was going to be part of DOGE, and then that fell apart.
There is a strength in saying that Elon Musk is in it, essentially because he also owns the largest social media avenue that exists when it comes to spreading of news, be it whether that is fake news or otherwise.
COATES: You think it adds credibility?
CROSS: It absolutely adds credibility. And that is why nobody knows who that woman is. Elon Musk's name attached to it and Elon Musk sending out these emails or having his little DOGE minions send them out, that matters because it carries with it weight, not only here, but also the world is watching what Elon Musk is doing to destroy the American government, to destroy our structure of a system in which there are checks and balances, to the behest of President Trump because he is doing this, and it is something that Trump has basically assigned him to do.
Again, no one knows who that woman is. The ire is on Musk. And it should also be doubly on President Trump because at the end of the day, Elon Musk approval ratings don't matter. He's not an elected official. Donald Trump's does. And also, what the conservatives have in their districts.
We're talking about the fact that a lot of these people are losing their jobs. But more importantly, programmatic cuts are affecting people's daily lives. And many of those people live in plus 18, plus 20 republican districts.
COATES: So, sitting here today, I don't know what the role of the administrator is distinct from what Elon Musk is doing. But Ameshia has a strong point that a lot of what we've been hearing from Republicans has been, look, he's the richest man in the world, why wouldn't you want somebody with this business savvy to be controlling the way DOGE works? I'm wondering if this is a setup for a scapegoat, frankly. What do you think?
TROVER: Who's a scapegoat?
COATES: The woman who -- we don't even know her name. I know her name. I'm sorry. Amy Gleason is her name, the acting administrator. If it's not Elon Musk, who is going to be the person who ultimately is the administrator of DOGE? Then, are they setting it up for (INAUDIBLE) any mistake falls on her lap?
TROVER: No. I mean, look, again, we have a president of the United States. I mean, he's the one who's going to have to own all of these decisions that are made. But I would just point to a Harvard poll that came out yesterday where 72% of this country are completely in line with the idea of what DOJ, this type of agency, is going to do. I mean, so I heard what the congressman said a while ago, that people are very angry about it. Yeah, I think it's a bunch of left-wing activists who are going to town halls that are angry about it. I'm not sure if the rest of the country is that angry about it. Donald Trump's approval rating hovers around 50%. It's the highest ever been he's ever had.
COATES: Well, they're not all -- there are obviously Republicans who share a concern. It's not as if that anyone who's complaining is somehow a liberal infiltrator to a republican town hall.
TROVER: Yeah, I didn't say -- I didn't say every single one of them. But I think there are a lot of liberal activists, when the congressman says, I'm going to have a town hall, who show up and are going to complain about it, and then they get on T.V. because they like it because the media wants to fall in line and say, oh, look at all these people who are upset.
But if you look at the polling numbers out there, Donald Trump's approval rate is the highest it has ever been. It hovers around 50%. So -- and people are agreeing that they like the idea of DOGE. So, I'm not sure that really equates to what we're seeing on some of the T.V. screens out there.
COATES: Yeah, the idea of something versus the details of how it's actually used as a vehicle, I think, is what the conflict is many times about, the devil being in the details. Let me move on, though, to the idea of the cabinet. Trump will have one of his first cabinet meetings. Elon Musk will be present. Why are you smiling at that prospect?
TROVER: Don't you think he should be there? I mean, he's taking on a very big role.
CROSS: Absolutely not.
TROVER: He's taking on a very big role. Why wouldn't he be there?
CROSS: It's legitimizing somebody who does not have a cabinet position.
TROVER: But if he weren't there, then everybody would be saying, well, why isn't Elon Musk there? He's running DOGE.
CROSS: No, we would say that he's not a member of the cabinet. DOGE is not a cabinet-level agency. Non-cabinet members do not attend cabinet meetings.
TROVER: I am on this show almost every Tuesday. We have spent the last three weeks talking about DOGE. This thing is talked about all the time. So now you're saying, no, he shouldn't be in this.
CROSS: Now, the White House is saying he's not even leading DOGE. So why isn't Gleason, the woman who we just found out today, not a member of that meeting if we're saying DOGE is so important?
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TROVER: He is the administrator.
CROSS: He is also not the chief administrator because his own White House is saying he's not the chief administrator. And on that same token, he's out here running in, you know, literally leading DOGE.
TROVER: I would say it's the president's prerogative of who he wants to have in a cabinet level meeting. This is a big deal as we are still talking about it here weeks into this administration. I think if he wants to be there, that's totally fine. If the president wants him here, that's his prerogative.
CROSS: Well, he's not Senate-confirmed. He's not a member of the cabinet.
COATES: Well, I have to say -- I mean -- and I hear this a lot about the media talking about DOGE. As if it is not one of the biggest stories -- TROVER: Absolutely.
COATES: -- of the federal employees. I mean, it's not like the media is just saying, I think I want to keep talking about Elon Musk. This is very significant. You've got a million employees responding to an email about what they did in the five-bullet point response. You've got the idea of layoffs happening, names coming off of federal buildings. I mean, it's not that it's the media chasing its tail. I just want to be clear on that.
TROVER: Completely agree.
CROSS: It's a total restructure. I think that we have to be very real about how he's doing this because I think that you're right. At the end of the day, there are people who wanted to see waste, fraud, abuse, inefficiency be eliminated. That's not new. They want to see that in federal government for decades. And there have been presidents on both sides of the aisle who pushed to do that, and they've done it through Congress.
This is a guy who has decided he is going to circumvent the entire system and not even go through or even have a conversation with his own heads of departments and agencies, the people who the Senate actually just confirmed a week, two weeks ago. He's eradicating all of that. And Elon Musk and Gleason, whomever the hell she is, are actually going through this process and just chopping people left, right, and sideways.
Nobody actually voted for what is happening here. They voted for, or at least announced that they did, for the economy. They wanted to make sure the price of eggs went down. They wanted to make sure their cost of living was more affordable. How is any of this making any of that happen?
TROVER: I don't think anybody out in America, outside of Washington, D.C., thinks that the government has been working very well for them the last several years. But you're making my point for me. That's exactly what I'm saying. It is a big deal. I'm not arguing that it's not. So, why wouldn't he be at a cabinet level meeting, especially when he's -- they're making decisions for those agencies? I just don't think there's anything wrong with it.
COATES: Well, I invite Ms. Amy Gleason to come on the program --
(LAUGHTER)
-- and I know she's supposed to be on vacation. I'd hate to have my PCO changed, but they did announce your name today, ma'am. We have questions. Lance Trover, Ameshia Cross, thank you both so much.
Still ahead, it's the question so many want to know. How much money is Musk actually saving? And is what his team is claiming legit? A reporter who dove right into DOGE will join us with his findings next. Plus, the vengeance tour may be continuing, right? President Trump is now, apparently, retaliating against a law firm that helped Jack Smith. And later, a blurring of the lines as the acting U.S. attorney for D.C. calls himself President Trump's attorney.
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COATES: It's the number one question on many of your minds. Just how much money has DOGE saved? Has it found any proof of fraud? Well, tonight, we're getting some answers for you. The DOGE website says that it saved the government $65 billion as of this morning. And that wall of receipts keeps tabs on the contracts that DOGE says it canceled.
But this running list of alleged savings is riddled with errors. So many. In fact, DOGE deleted some of the savings claims from the wall of receipts. And one-third of the canceled contracts on the wall of receipts are listed as saving you, the taxpayer, zero dollars. Why? because those federal funds have already been committed to be spent.
Here to dig more into all of this is David Fahrenthold, investigative reporter for "The New York Times." David, thank you for joining us this evening. A lot has been talked about in these savings. They have claimed to have saved about $65 billion. But what did your reporting uncover about that figure?
DAVID FAHRENTHOLD, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, they haven't given us a lot of details about how they get to that number, what the cuts are that make up that $65 billion number. The one place they've given us is that wall of receipts you showed us. That's the only place where they've sort of shown their work in public. Here are the things we cut, here are the savings we got from all of them.
And what we found is, as you said, that list is riddled with errors and sloppy errors, basic errors, to the point that the top five cuts, the biggest cuts that they announced when they first put up a wall of receipts last week, they're all gone now because they were all wrong. All five of them were wrong in ways that made the savings seem much, much bigger than it actually was.
COATES: What's the source of that error? Was it their own accounting or were they relying on other data? What?
FAHRENTHOLD: You know, it seems like they just don't know how to read federal contracts. So, just to give you an example. The first one, the biggest one was $8 billion cut out of the budget of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That turns out to be a typo. It was really eight million. But it's a typo they should have caught because if you knew anything about ICE, you know that their entire budget is $8 billion. So, the idea that they put it all in one contract seems a little implausible. That's what they went with.
COATES: That's a huge typo. A billion versus a million. You got to be kidding me. FAHRENTHOLD: It's the factor of a thousand, right? So, the next three biggest contracts in the list were all the same contract counted three times instead of once, $655 million. It wasn't worth that much even once. But the fact that they looked at that and didn't say, hey, isn't it weird that there's three contracts in a row that are down to a dollar exactly the same? Instead, they just put it out there. And so, there was, again, more than a billion dollars-worth of phantom cuts.
[23:24:58]
It just seems like they don't understand the documents they're looking at, the data that they're putting out to the public, which doesn't really bode well for their understanding of other complicated government systems they're dealing with now.
COATES: I want to dig deeper in some of the more other contracts as well because there's one at the IRS for 1.9 billion bucks that DOGE claims that it canceled. But who really canceled it?
FAHRENTHOLD: Joe Biden. The Biden administration. We talked to two of the people who were awarded that contract. It was canceled back in November.
COATES: That's pretty stunning to think about. So how does that somehow get slapped on to this new wall of receipts? Is this -- I'm trying to understand. Is this just pure human error? Is this surreptitious in some way? What do you think it is?
FAHRENTHOLD: In this way, we actually can see a little bit of how it got on the list, which is Treasury, the department that includes the IRS, tweets at DOGE last week, hey, look at DOGE, look at this, we saved $1.9 billion. DOGE then picks it up, tweets it back out and says, isn't this great, puts it on the wall.
So, my question, like your question all along, has been like, is this DOGE trying to fool me? I think the public doesn't understand this. Or is this somebody else fooling DOGE, realizing that the DOGE people are moving so fast, know so little, and you can sort of pass off fake cuts as real cuts and they'll accept it?
In the Treasury's case, it seems more like the latter. Treasury offers up this contract that they really cut back in November and said, hey, look at this, DOGE. Look at all this great work we're doing. And DOGE just accepts it, none the wiser.
COATES: I mean, they measure twice, cut once. They seem to be the opposite of things that are happening right now. But some of the contracts with discrepancies, as you mentioned, they vanished from the DOGE website overnight. But DOGE is next explaining what happened. And we've heard the word transparency used in connection with DOGE, but as a criticism for not being transparent. So how transparent are they, really?
FAHRENTHOLD: Well, as you said, they said it would be maximally transparent, and this wall of receipts is supposed to be the epitome of that. But instead, you're right, the five biggest cuts all disappeared over the last few days with no explanation how they got this wrong.
And even now, now that they've got rid of the five biggest cuts, the one that remains, the biggest cut on the list right now is that $1.9 billion IRS contract we talked about which, as we discussed, isn't a real DOGE cut either. It's a cut from last year. So, even now, it's wrong. But there has been no explanation from them about how they got this stuff so wrong.
COATES: I want to apologize to my audience for making you do math this close to midnight. But David Fahrenthold, thank you so much.
FAHRENTHOLD: Thank you.
COATES: One person standing by to protect Elon Musk and DOGE, the interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. His name is Ed Martin. But Martin is going even further than that. In a post on X, Martin called himself and other federal prosecutors -- quote -- "President Trump's lawyers."
Now, here's a reality check. Federal prosecutors don't take an oath to serve as the president's lawyer. The oath says -- quote -- "I will support the Constitution of the United States." The Constitution, the people, not the president. In fact, when you stand up, you say, on behalf of the people of the United States, not on behalf of the president.
With me now, former federal prosecutor Sean Brennan. He was hired to work on January 6 cases, which is also why he was fired from the D.C. office. Sean, to hear what has happened to those lawyers who worked on those cases is truly astonishing from one prosecutor to another. And when you saw that post from your former boss, what did that tell you about the direction your office was going?
SEAN BRENNAN, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR, D.C. U.S. ATTORNEY'S OFFICE: You know, it didn't tell me anything that I hadn't heard from his first day in office, from his very first introductions to the staff of the U.S. Attorney's Office. He went out of his way at every turn to highlight his ties to Donald Trump.
This is not the first time we've heard him refer to himself and the U.S. Attorney's Office as President Trump's lawyers. And like you just said, I did not take an oath to defend any specific president, I took an oath to the Constitution when I was a prosecutor.
COATES: You know, the unfortunate aspect of that, of course, is I wonder how the morale must be given not only the firings, but the idea of, you know, it's a political appointee. They serve at the pleasure of the president. He has every right to have who he wants in that position. But to say that they're on behalf of the president really dictates what the priorities would be.
BRENNAN: Yeah, and I think that's really alarming, especially like many prosecutors. I chose to become a prosecutor because I wanted to be an advocate for victims to stand up in court and be a voice for victims of crime. And Ed Martin is saying he doesn't care about the victims, he cares about standing up for Donald Trump. COATES: Has there been, during your time there, a priority that he laid out as what the office would be focusing on? Obviously, a very small percentage of cases, if that, are covering areas around January 6, areas around even the president.
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It's about the day-to-day victims in the area of violent crimes, of sexual assault, of domestic violence, let alone other crimes as well. Did he set a tone that said those were less prioritized?
BRENNAN: You know, I wouldn't say he said that they were less prioritized, but you could certainly read between the lines. On his very first day as U.S. attorney, he held town halls with our office where he described the goal of cleaning up D.C.'s streets. But nowhere in that conversation did he talk about needing to do that because of any risks in our communities or to help victims.
Instead, he said it was because Donald Trump told him he wanted to invite the world to D.C. this summer for the 250th anniversary of our country's founding, and he wanted the city to look good and to reflect on Donald Trump that it looked good.
COATES: Hmm. Okay. Well, the White House suspended also the security clearance, as we understand, of lawyers who were working with Jack Smith. Obviously not in your particular office. But Ed Martin wrote on X -- quote -- "Save your receipts, Smith and Covington." Of course, the firm and Jack Smith. "We'll be in touch soon." Hashtag, no one is above the law. Now, this was a group that provided pro bono legal service, I understand, to Smith. So why do you think their security clearances are so at risk now?
BRENNAN: I mean, it is directly interfering with their ability to defend Jack Smith which, again, is a core constitutional right, because even though we're used to thinking of security clearances as something that government attorneys have, defense counsel who are working on big national security cases where they're going to be dealing with classified documents as is the case here need to be cleared in order to review and access those documents. So, in essence, it is potentially limiting Covington's ability to actually represent Jack Smith.
COATES: You could paralyze the entire practice, frankly. That's a huge practice at that firm. Finally, does this all have a chilling effect on the prosecutors who remain in that office, you think?
BRENNAN: Absolutely. I think that has been the intent from the beginning. Within his first week in the U.S. Attorney's Office, Ed Martin announced a project to investigate the use of certain -- charging certain statutes in January 6 cases. He has talked in emails about reporting on your colleagues if you hear that they're engaging in anything related to DEI.
This is someone who is building a culture of mistrust in the office where prosecutors always have to be worried. Instead of thinking just about the facts and the law, they're thinking, am I going to get in trouble for doing my job and upholding my oath to the Constitution?
COATES: As interchangeable as prosecutors are, that trust is needed between one another, and it's gone.
BRENNAN: And it's also needed with the court, and I think that's something that's really critical right now. The U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. has a long tradition, that you're well familiar with, of standing up in court and making representations to the judges. And when that credibility is lost, I really just don't know where we go from there in our attempt to tackle crime.
COATES: Sean Brennan, thank you so much.
Still ahead, are you ready for Andrew Cuomo to be back in American politics? Because ready or not, here comes the former governor. The brand-new reporting tonight on his plans to return from his kind of political exile and what it will mean for the Democratic Party. And later, he is accused in the heinous Idaho college murders, but how exactly did law enforcement come to suspect Bryan Kohberger? We have the revelation tonight that's raising some serious questions.
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COATES: Well, new tonight, CNN has learned former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who stepped down from office amid a sexual harassment scandal in 2021, is now preparing to announce a run for New York City mayor with a formal announcement coming as soon as this coming weekend. That's according to four people familiar with the planning.
Now, if he runs, Cuomo would immediately become a favorite in the mayoral race and potentially complete a political comeback for the ages. It would undoubtedly set up a match up with sitting mayor, Eric Adams, whose high-profile scandals have him sliding well behind Cuomo in early polling. Adams addressed that just last night.
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MAYOR ERIC ADAMS, NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: You know, there's a lot of time until June. I talked to before Andrew Yang leading me by double digits in February. We saw what happened. We're not calling Andrew Yang mayor. We're saying Eric Adams is mayor.
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COATES: Joining me now, Spectrum News political anchor Errol Louis and veteran New York journalist Andrew Kirtzman. Glad to have both of you on. Errol, let me begin with you. I mean, Cuomo was the governor, but he has kept a pretty low profile as of late, but there have been rumblings for a while about his potential candidacy. So, what has changed since he was forced to resign?
ERROL LOUIS, POLITICAL ANCHOR, SPECTRUM NEWS: Laura, the thing that has changed that I think most accounts for him getting into the race are the legal problems of Eric Adams. The blast radius from whatever arrangement the current mayor has made with the Trump White House led to what? About seven resignations in the Justice Department. It led to the resignations of four of the deputy mayors who are running the city along with Eric Adams.
The current administration is in a state of freefall, a state of collapse. And I think that is what has convinced Andrew Cuomo that as difficult as it may be and jumping in kind of late in the race, that this might be a race that he can win.
COATES: Let's talk about the difficulty of that. And Andrew, I don't know if you were prescient or just knew something else, but last year, you wrote a New York Times op-ed and it was titled, "Is New York Ready to Forgive Andrew Cuomo?"
[23:40:01]
In it, you write that there's a compelling case for Cuomo running for mayor. Do you still feel that way?
ANDREW KIRTZMAN, JOURNALIST, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF ACTUM: Yeah. I mean, you know, this is -- we're on the verge of this kind of cinematic moment where this vanquished leader returns from exile, you know, claiming to save the day and avenge his name. Right?
Andrew Cuomo is possibly the most accomplished governor of the 21st century. He's an extraordinary leader. Between his father, Mario, and he, they were in office for, I think, 22, 23 years. He is widely considered a very competent governor, very flawed personality, someone who was driven from office in a sexual harassment case.
And what I wrote in the Times and what I still believe is that New Yorkers are going to be kind of put in this position of judge and jury to determine whether Andrew Cuomo's sins outweigh the city's need for a competent leader to come in and kind of save the day here from what has really been this kind of comical over the top, you know, set of circumstances in which Eric Adams, the mayor, seems to kind of walk around in this cloud of chaos.
And meanwhile, the city -- the public is not that happy with the city to begin with. You know, crime is still on people's minds. And it just seems like no one is in control. And Andrew Cuomo, for all his flaws, is a person who I think everyone can agree will take the city and use controlling methods to get the place under control. I think that gives a lot of people a lot of comfort. I think many people will be tempted to overlook his sins.
COATES: What a cost-benefit analysis for the electorate, Errol. I mean, like you noted as well, Cuomo would be up against embattled New York mayor, Eric Adams, who has started to align himself with, of course, President Donald Trump. Do you see President Trump playing a role in this mayoral race at all?
LOUIS: I think it would be irresistible for the president to stay out of it.
COATES: I think you're right.
LOUIS: On the other hand, it's not clear which way he might be leaning. Clearly, he has some kind of a deal with Eric Adams. But I don't know if it would extend to actually getting involved in the race directly. And in an overwhelmingly democratic city, there's not much Donald Trump can do except annoy the Democrats who in the primary are going to probably pick the next mayor.
On the other hand, Andrew Cuomo has had an interesting relationship with Donald Trump. If you go back to the pandemic, Laura, he both criticized then President Trump, but also went to the White House and met with him and got some extraordinary resources out of that White House. We know that Donald Trump responds to strength, and that is the brand that Andrew Cuomo brings to the table as a political leader.
COATES: You know, interesting point. Of course, Adams has denied that there's any sort of deal that was made and as the impetus behind this. But, you know, on this point, Andrew, as Errol mentioned, there was a relationship that we saw in full before our eyes during the COVID. And then he came to support Trump, in a sense, in his New York hush money case.
Andrew, do you think that Cuomo will deal with Trump if he is elected mayor? Will it be an antagonistic relationship like, say, Governor Newsom or will it be one that might yield some benefits for New Yorkers?
KIRTZMAN: I think it's going to be a fascinating situation if Cuomo does become mayor. Cuomo is a pragmatist. He's also a very widely politician. You know, he's smarter than to just go out and wantonly criticize Trump over everything. He knows that the city is going to need Trump. He knows that Trump takes offense very easily.
But he's also -- he's also taking charge of a city that is overwhelmingly democratic, and I think has been kind of appalled by the specter of a Democratic mayor being beholden to President Trump. I think the public's going to want to see him exert some force against Trump, but he's too smart to do it kind of recklessly.
COATES: Errol, Andrew, if you've learned anything, it's no one should want to hold the hammer of any nail in a political coffin because he often can be wrong. We'll see what actually happens. Errol Louis, Andrew Kirtzman, thanks both so much.
LOUIS: Thank you, Laura.
COATES: Ahead, new court records released in the murder of four University of Idaho students. They reveal how the FBI identified Bryan Kohberger, who you see there, as a suspect. And it involves the use of databases that law enforcement isn't normally supposed to use. I'll explain next.
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COATES: New details are emerging tonight in the case against Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of the gruesome murder of four University of Idaho students back in 2022.
A judge unsealed the transcripts of a closed-door hearing revealing that Kohberger wasn't even a suspect until the FBI was able to link him to DNA that had been found on a knife sheath at the murder scene. Using what? Well, a technique called genetic genealogy or IGG. Now, IGG, it combines DNA analysis with geological research.
But Kohberger's defense attorney argued that evidence was obtained improperly and should, therefore, be excluded. Now, the judge ultimately ruled against Kohberger and now will allow that evidence at trial.
Joining me now, Jarrett Ambeau, a criminal defense trial attorney and forensic DNA expert, and Howard Blum, the author of "When the Night Comes Falling," a book on these Idaho murders.
[23:50:05]
Thank you both for joining here. I've been very intrigued by this case, as really has the nation. And Jarrett, I'll begin with you because investigators took key evidence. The DNA that was found on the knife sheath at the murder scene. They used it to isolate Kohberger. Explain how genetic genealogy works and is it reliable?
JARRETT AMBEAU, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY, FORENSIC DNA EXPERT: So reliable only in the sense of an investigative lead. Genetic genealogy is not admissible in court like identification DNA because it doesn't have that reliability, it doesn't have that rigorous scientific testing.
And so, what happens is they take the DNA, they develop different strands or different fragments in genetic genealogy called SNPs or Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, and they do about a quarter of a million SNPs. And they take that information, and they put it through an algorithm.
And it finds people that may or may not be related to the unknown sample or the unknown genetic sample. And that is what they did with Kohberger. The FBI took over after, I think, another lab had done so first, and the FBI developed Kohberger as a possible contributor to the DNA sample on that knife sleeve, on the knife fuller.
COATES: Now, investigators, they didn't actually reveal using genetic genealogy in that probable cause affidavit that you present to talk about the suspect. So how could that possibly impact the trial?
AMBEAU: So, I think what the defense attorney was attempting to say was this genetic genealogy, this information from the DNA strand, includes a tremendous amount of personal information, including medical information and such, and they were on constitutional grounds of privacy saying that they didn't have a right to access all of that information at the same time that they were accessing his relations -- his related -- possible related parties in these genetic databases.
But these matters are not being entered into the court in any way. They were not used in the probable cause affidavit, and they won't be offered to the jury because after they identified him as a possible suspect, they then went through this process of taking some trash out of his parents' home, actually like actual trash out of the wastebasket on the road, testing that and identifying a male person in that home as the genetic father of this unknown sample, and that's when they had enough probable cause.
COATES: Now, of course, they're going to have to, as prosecutors, prove their case, Howard. They have beyond a reasonable doubt as the standard. And any evidence that will come in will have to be weighed, whether it's prejudicial or probative, meaning helpful to the jury. And they have a lot ahead of them in order to be able to accomplish that.
But Howard, police had no suspect for weeks. This was a very high- profile case. Then it seemed suddenly this name surfaced. Howard, how did that change the way the investigation was unfolding?
HOWARD BLUM, AUTHOR: It changes completely up until they have this DNA evidence. They had no name for nearly seven weeks. They didn't get the name the FBI says until December 19th. So that was seven weeks after the crime was committed.
Up till then, it seemed like the perfect crime. They didn't have a motive. They didn't have a murder weapon. They had pictures of a white car in the area, but they weren't sure of the year of the car. There was no picture of the driver at the wheel. There was no license plate. And Kohberger had an alibi, saying he was off looking at the stars at the time. A pretty weak alibi.
But still, they had really no case against him until they use his DNA. They arrest him, and then they take a cheek swab. The cheek swab they take the night of the arrest matches the DNA on the knife sheath, so they claim, and that's going to be the basis of the case against him. However, the fact that they can raise all these questions and make -- they can put a direct identification of Kohberger as a suspect without the DNA.
COATES: This is going to be a really important point, as you said. And this had a huge effect on the community. I mean, this was a university town. People were going home. Students were afraid. They didn't know who had committed these crimes. And I remember so well the reporting at the time.
Jarrett, we also learned the DNA evidence from another man was found at the murder scene, unknown male B. But it never pursued after Kohberger was named a suspect. How will that play into the defense's case? I suspect they'll try to plant that as a seed of reasonable doubt.
AMBEAU: Sure. In fact, the defense in pleadings has said that there are two other unknown males in the home found in what they believe to be a source, although this is not supported in the science exactly, but source from blood in the home, and then one -- a third additional man on a glove outside.
[23:55:00]
So, I think there are some unanswered questions with regard to the DNA in this case. And you are absolutely correct, none of that DNA was searched through the CODIS database, the FBI database. And so, we're sort of left to wonder where did that DNA come from? Who is that? It has not been identified as anyone that has been in the home. It has not been identified as any boyfriends or home visitors. This is unknown DNA from other contributors inside the home. That, of course, raises very serious questions.
COATES: Howard, as your book points out, the idea of the impact on these families -- I mean, these are -- people want justice for this community and family. There are real people who were harmed, killed. And my heart just goes out as we're processing all of it. Howard Blum, Jarrett Ambeau, thank you both so much.
I want to thank you all as well for watching. "Anderson Cooper 360" is next.
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