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Soon, Trump To Land In Florida Ahead Of Arraignment; The Impact The Federal Indictment Of Trump Is Having; Indicted Aide Walt Nauta Traveling To FL With Trump; Trump-Appointed Judge Returns To Spotlight In Ex-President's Federal Criminal Case. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired June 12, 2023 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Joining us now to discuss, CNN anchor and chief national correspondent, John King, CNN special correspondent, Jamie Gangel, CNN anchor of "INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY," Abby Phillip, CNN senior legal analyst, Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor, and CNN senior law enforcement analyst, Andrew McCabe, who served as FBI deputy director.

John, we've now had a few days to absorb all these allegations. Have any minds on Capitol Hill changed? I mean, the release of the indictment, you would think, would have an impact on some people?

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR & CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You would think. But you just listened there before Lauren Fox, she included the sound from Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who, yes, is a Republican from California and, yes, he's the head of the Republicans.

But he's the speaker of the House. He's the third constitutional office --

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Not just the Republicans in the House.

KING: Right, he's the speaker of everybody in the House. And he's third in line for the presidency. And he wants to do what-aboutism. That has been the largest line from the Republicans.

I said the other day, there's a reason Trump, 10, 15, times a day either goes after Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or the state of something like that, just to preprogram his people that he's the victim. And we kind of roll our eyes at it but in that silo it works.

The fact that Speaker McCarthy -- Speaker McCarthy is a very complicated leader right now. He has his own problems with conservatives. Guess what? The conservatives he has a problem with are the most pro-Trump people he's having a problem with.

For him, it's about power. And they want to say Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton.

Not excusing Joe Biden having documents in his garage or Hillary Clinton's e-mail server, but if you were trying to put these into context, they're "A" and "B" and "Z." Trump being the "Z."

But they talk to their base in a way -- their base operates in a choir practice, only listen to their own media silo, and it is effective. It can be unnerving, distracting, not a sign of leadership, but it is effective.

TAPPER: So I was reading this "Washington Post," a cover story about, what is the difference between Trump and these other cases? And there's a section that says the indictment does not charge Trump with the illegal retention of any of the 197 documents he returned to the Archives.

That shows, if Trump had returned all the classified documents he had, he probably never would have been charged with any crime, said a former federal prosecutor.

These facts speak for themselves, Jamie. What are you hearing from your sources?

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: No question.

Just to underscore what John just said, Donald Trump is very good at branding and that's what we're seeing again here. He is branding. And Kevin McCarthy is.

Could we just point out that Bill Barr, his former attorney general, said, if even half of it is true, he's toast? And that he was shocked by the sensitivity of these documents. Those voices are far and few between, but they're there.

I spoke to a senior -- a very senior Democratic source this morning who talked to me a little bit on background about what they hope their sort of protocol will be in all of this. And it will be interesting to see if it happens.

The idea is to say, innocent until proven guilty. In other words, not to double down. Let the national security experts talk about that. Let the lawyers talk about that. But I think we may see the Democrats pull back a little.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR, "INSIDE POLITICS, SUNDAY": And let Republicans paint themselves into a box.

GANGEL: Correct.

PHILLIP: Because the reality is that we've been here before with the Republican Party.

The problem for the party right now is that it is still Trump's party. He has expanded the horizon of unacceptable things, ranging from this to January 6th.

And so if you are a Kevin McCarthy and, after January 6th, you went down to Mar-a-Lago to ask Donald Trump for his blessing, you're not going to turn on him over this. That's true not just of Kevin McCarthy, but for a lot of Republicans. The problem with that perspective is that it totally makes sense from

a political perspective for the Republican base, but the rest of the American public is not in that place.

TAPPER: Right.

PHILLIP: We have a lot of different pieces of evidence to support that. The 2020 election that Trump lost, the '22 election in which Trump candidates lost, Trump-endorsed candidates lost, most of them.

The Republican Party has not been able to deal with the delta that exists between where their base is and where the rest of the country is. And that is just one more example of that.

It doesn't make it acceptable. But we're just seeing the results of a Republican base that is just so far to the right. Not even really the ideological right. Just in Trump's corner. They don't know how to get out of that.

TAPPER: They're not more conservative than Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney.

PHILLIP: I mean, absolutely not. And, in fact, many conservatives don't even see themselves in today's Republican Party, in which the party of law and order is now calling it the Department of Injustice?

TAPPER: Right.

PHILLIP: I think there's just a huge disconnect that we are still living through as a country and that the Republican Party doesn't know how to move forward.

[13:35:05]

TAPPER: I want to dive into the legal arguments that we're hearing from Republicans, just to kind of sus out what's real and what's not.

Andy, if I could start with you.

There's this constant comparison, understandably, of Donald Trump's classified documents case with that of Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. You just saw Speaker McCarthy talking about it.

Take a listen to South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): You got vice president, secretary of states and presidents handling this stuff. You had Bill Clinton with tapes in his sock drawer. I would like to review the system.

But here's the point I'm trying to make. I think the espionage charges are completely wrong. And I think they paint an impression that doesn't exist. This is not espionage.

(END VIDEO CLIP) TAPPER: So, OK, first of all, as a factual matter, charges under the Espionage Act do not necessarily mean you committed espionage. I'm not a lawyer and I know that because --

(CROSSTALK)

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: You can guarantee he knows that very well.

TAPPER: He knows that, of course. But -- I mean, leaking documents to the press, you can be charged depending on how serious the documents are, under the Espionage. That's not espionage. He knows better.

But let's talk about the Hillary Clinton case because that was a serious breach of protocol. And she was criticized by the FBI director at the time for being -- I think he used the word "reckless," I might be wrong.

What is the difference?

MCCABE: There's huge differences here, Jake. Unlike what you've heard from Congressmen McCarthy and Biggs, our system is not based on -- we don't play by organized crime rules. You take out one of my guys, I take out one of your guys. It's all equal.

Every one of the cases is analyzed based on the evidence, evidence that you've been able to uncover during the course of the investigation.

In the Clinton case, what we had in the Clinton case was essentially 113 e-mail conversations. This is of tens of thousands of e-mails reviewed, 30,000 she handed over, plus many thousands more we were able to recover.

So 113 e-mails over the course of 55 conversations. Eight "top secret" documents, 37 secret -- not documents -- content, judged to be at that level and 10 at the confidential level.

Important to note that none of that was actual documents, bearing headers and footers and classified stamps and portion markings and all those sorts of things you'd expect to see.

It was simply content of conversations that implicated information that should have been classified at that level.

TAPPER: Correct me if I'm wrong, the inspector general concluded that -- the State Department inspector general concluded that there was no attempt to hide this from the Archives, hide this from the FBI.

MCCABE: That's correct.

TAPPER: No one is justifying what she did in terms of the unsecure e- mail server, but there was actual conversations?

MCCABE: Neither the I.G. nor FBI was able to cover any evidence of intentionality, intention to remove material, intention to withhold material, intention to essentially converse in classified ways.

(CROSSTALK)

MCCABE: It was simply conversations. Mostly, it was information that was sent to Secretary Clinton while she was secretary and that she either responded to or received.

TAPPER: Elie, you have to help me out here, because House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, who has defended literally everything that Donald Trump has ever done, he said -- take a listen to what he told Dana Bash yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): The standard is clear, the standard is Navy versus Egan, a 1988 case. Unanimous decision from the court that -- Justice Blackman wrote the opinion.

And it said the president's ability to classify and control access to national security information flows from the Constitution. He decides. He alone decides.

He said he declassified this material. He can put it where he wants. He can handle it however he wants. That's the law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Is that accurate? What's he talking about?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: It's half accurate. It sounds good but doesn't hold up.

Jim Jordan is correct that that case he cited stands for the idea that the president has the utmost and perhaps unlimited power and authority to classify or declassify over national security.

But two problems. One, there's zero evidence that Donald Trump used that power while he was president.

To the contrary, in the indictment, there's a recording -- we have reporting on this and broke this story, Paula Reid and others -- that Donald Trump is bragging after the fact about the fact that he has classified documents.

And he says, see, as president I could have declassified it, now I can't, but this is still a secret.

Jim Jordan's legal principle is correct. Yes, the president could declassify but the facts show he never did.

And I have to add this. There are a handful of laws out there that govern handling of classified or sensitive information. Some of those laws say specifically it has to be a classified document.

The law that DOJ has charged here does not say it has to be classified. It says it has to be national defense information. So really, the question of classification or declassification does not

come into play in this indictment because the way that I think DOJ intentionally chose to charge this.

[13:40:08]

TAPPER: All right, very interesting.

Everyone, standby.

Minutes from now, Miami officials are going to come forward in a press conference to tell us how the city of Miami is going to keep people safe as the former president prepares for his day in court and his supporters gather. We'll bring that to you live.

But first, he's accused of moving boxes of classified documents to keep them from investigators. And now Trump aide, Walt Nauta, is enroute to Miami alongside the former president. Coming up, what we know about Nauta and the legal troubles he's now facing.

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[13:45:05]

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Right now, an aide indicted alongside Donald Trump is traveling to Florida with the ex-president ahead of their court appearances tomorrow. Walt Nauta is facing six criminal charges.

Now prosecutors allege that he moved boxes in May of 2022. He did that at Trump's direction. And then lied to investigators about doing so. They detail all of that in the indictment.

Right now, Nauta appears to still be standing by Trump, even campaigning with him over the weekend in Georgia.

CNN's Sara Murray joins us now.

Obviously, Sara, we don't know, you know, what lawyers are telling him, whether his situation of cooperation could change. These are all great unknowns right now. Certainly, seems to be standing by his man for the moment.

So who is Walt Nauta? What was his role?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Look, this is someone who was a little-known figure until recently, of course, until his name came up a whole lot in that indictment.

Walt Nauta is a 40-year-old veteran of the U.S. Navy. He's someone who got his start in the White House in the mess hall. He went on to become the White House valet.

And then followed Trump on to Mar-a-Lago to become his body man, someone working in close proximity to the former president.

You need a Diet Coke, this guy will get it for you. You need to hand over papers that you're holding onto, you will hand them to your body man.

Prosecutors essentially say that Donald Trump may have retained these documents but Walt Nauta helped him conceal them at Mar-a-Lago and then was not forthcoming or honest with prosecutors.

So he's facing a number of charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document, making false statements and so on.

In the indictment, perhaps the most damming allegation is when they lay out Walt Nauta moving boxes around at Donald Trump's direction. You know, they sort of zero in on this timeframe between the Trump subpoena and when Evan Corcoran searches for the documents.

And they say that Nauta moved boxes around five different times. He took 64 boxes out of the storage unit and only put 30 back, which is why Evan Corcoran did not turn up all of those documents with classified markings that were strewn around Mar-a-Lago -- Erin?

BURNETT: Yes, all right. Well, Sara, thank you very much.

I mean, it is pretty damming. They have the phone records. Right now, moves boxes. Gets a phone call from Trump, goes in a few minutes later on camera, moving boxes. It is quite damming in the indictment. As we wait to see whether his view is standing on this will change.

Thank you so much, Sara.

Next, she was appointed to the federal bench by ex-President Trump just three years ago. Now, of course, Aileen Cannon has been tapped to oversee this new federal criminal case in Miami. What do we know about this federal judge at the center of this yet again? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:52:27]

TAPPER: As former President Trump prepares for the legal fight of his life, a familiar face will be presiding over his case. Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon has been assigned to oversee his trial.

Cannon was appointed by then-President Trump back in 2020. She already ruled in his favor once regarding the classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago but her ruling was overturned by an appeals court that harshly criticized her decision.

Critics are now seeking to get her taken off the case.

CNN's senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, Elie Honig, is here with us.

First of all, let's just state, just because somebody was appointed to the bench by Donald Trump does not mean that that person is biased against or for Donald Trump either way.

We saw that during the 2020 election fiasco where Donald Trump kept challenging election results and judge after judge, including Trump- appointed judges, ruled against him.

So tell me, what do we need to know about Judge Cannon.

HONIG: It's a moment of truth in any criminal case when you get that judge assigned. I have a feeling Trump's team was quite happy when they got Judge Cannon. I have a feeling prosecutors were maybe not so happy.

Judge Cannon graduated from law school in 2007. She's very young for a federal judge. She's 42 or so.

She clerked for a very conservative federal judge, went into private practice, and then she was a federal prosecutor for seven years in the Southern District of Florida. So she understands how criminal trials work.

Now, as you said, she was nominated to be a federal judge by Donald Trump in 2020, not at all an automatic conflict or disqualifier. She was confirmed 56-21. And actually 12 Democrats voted in favor of her confirmation.

Now, as you said, if her name sounds familiar, it was because she was part of this case earlier.

After the search at Mar-a-Lago in August, Donald Trump made a motion saying, I want a special master to review these documents for privileges before they go over to DOJ.

Judge Cannon granted that. She said, yes, I will appoint a special master. Now, DOJ appealed and they won.

The court of appeals reversed Judge Cannon in quite stark terms. They found in the court of appeals that Judge Cannon had, quote, "improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction."

Let me translate that. That means she went out of her lane. She did something that a judge does not have the power to do.

And the 11th Circuit wrote, "The law is clear, we cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrants to block government investigations after the execution of a warrant, nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so."

So the court reversed her. But now she's back. She came out of the wheel. She's been randomly assigned to this case.

TAPPER: Very interesting.

Do you think that the prosecution will be able to or will remove her from the case?

[13:55:05]

HONIG: There's only two ways a judge can be removed from the case. One, the judge herself can say, I have a conflict of interest, I'm out. It happens all the time. I don't believe she has a conflict of interest here.

Or DOJ can move the judge. Say, Judge, we think you ought to recuse yourself. DOJ does that sparingly. They don't like the look of judge shopping. And it's kind of awkward if you ask the judge to leave.

What might the conflict be here? She is a Trump nominee. We have never quite had this. We have never had a former president on trial so we have never had someone who has nominated the judge. I don't think that will measure up for the reasons we said before.

And the fact she made a prior ruling that was overturned, judges get overturned every day, all the time. If that was the basis for conflicts, we would have judges getting kicked out of cases all the time.

TAPPER: All right. Very interesting.

Elie, thanks so much.

Minutes from now, Miami city officials will be giving an update on security preparations ahead of former President Trump's appearance tomorrow inside a federal courtroom in Miami. Stay with CNN's live special coverage.

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