The Lead with Jake Tapper Aired April 10, 2024 - 17:00 ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. [17:00:00] JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to "The Lead." I'm Jake Tapper. At this hour, the goon squad faces the music. Deep down in Mississippi, the sentencing for six former police officers convicted of torturing two black men. The rulings in the shadow of the Rankin County Confederate Monument right outside the courthouse. Plus, former major league baseball player and current Republican Senate candidate Steve Garvey here on "The Lead" from his days on the mound now making a pitch for politics, taking on Congressman Adam Schiff in a high profile race for the US Senate. And leading this hour, a conservative revolt against Speaker Mike Johnson in a protest vote today, was it led by Donald Trump? In the wee hours of the night, Trump posted in all caps on Truth Social, "Kill FISA. It was illegally used against me and many others. They spied on my campaign." He signed off that post with his initials, DJT. FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It allows surveillance on foreign nationals without a warrant. The current law expires next Friday. Late this afternoon, 19 House Republicans did as Trump advised today, voting to defeat what's called the rule, which would allow debate on this FISA legislation, forcing Speaker Johnson to scramble and find another path forward. Let's go to CNN's Melanie Zanona on Capitol Hill. Melanie, Speaker Johnson called an Emergency Republican Conference Meeting after the failed vote. What options does he have left? Are there tweaks that can happen to the bill to make it acceptable? And how big a blow is this to him overall? MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Well, Jake, this is a major setback not only for the legislation, but also for Mike Johnson's leadership, which is very much under a microscope at the moment. Now, Johnson did say that they're going to go back to the drawing board huddle as a conference and try to figure out a new plan going forward. They are still meeting in the basement of the Capitol as we speak. One potential option is to just pass a clean extension ahead of this April 19th deadline, which would rely on democratic support. But Johnson needs to tread very carefully here because he is already in hot water with hardline conservatives. And making matters worse for Johnson is that Donald Trump, as you mentioned, has waded in to this debate and encouraged Republicans to vote against the bill. But there are some signs that Johnson is trying to so show some unity with Trump. My colleague, Kristen Holmes, and I were the first to report that Johnson plans to head to Mar-a-Lago in Florida on Friday to deliver a joint press conference on so-called election integrity. Of course, Johnson was one of those members who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. He encouraged members to sign on to a lawsuit to throw out legal election results, that ultimately was rejected by the Supreme Court. But clearly, Johnson is trying to stay in Trump's good graces and talk about issues that the former president cares about amid these threats to his speakership. TAPPER: Johnson is also dealing with problem child Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who not only opposed the FISA reauthorization, she's trying to kick him out of his job as speaker. I heard the two met earlier today. ZANONA: They did meet for over an hour in the speaker's office in what was described as a very intense meeting. And this is the first time that the two of them have spoke since Marjorie Taylor Greene sent a letter to her Republican colleagues laying out a very detailed case against Speaker Johnson. But after that meeting, she made clear she is not backing down and she claims support for her effort is growing. Just take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): Most of the members I've talked to support the letter that I sent, and they completely agree with it. And that's the only feedback that I've heard, so I obviously haven't talked to the few members that you interviewed. It's a very serious letter and the motion to vacate is real. (END VIDEO CLIP) ZANONA: Now, Greene has not said if and when she plans to force a floor vote on trying to remove Johnson, but she did warn Johnson in that meeting that he cannot move ahead with any additional funding for Ukraine. So far, though, Johnson has not committed to abandoning those plans, Jake. TAPPER: All right. Melanie Zanona, thanks so much. We're also getting reaction from former Trump attorney general, Bill Barr blasting the House GOP for blocking the FISA debate and blasting Trump for encouraging them to do so. In a phone interview with CNN, he said, "I think it's a travesty and reckless. We're faced with probably the greatest threat to the homeland from terrorist attack and our means of defending against that is FISA. And to take that tool away, I think, is going to result in successful terrorist attacks and the loss life. Let's of bring in CNN's John Miller. John, explain what section 702 of FISA actually does. JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: So section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorizes the FBI, the CIA, the NSA principally, the eavesdropping agency, if you will, and the National Counterterrorism Center to listen-in in targeted surveillance of foreigners, not US persons, who are not in the United States but overseas, involved in activities like spying, government-sponsored computer hacking, the terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda. So it's basically trying to use the collection on a classified level, top secret stuff, against people who would not be protected by the US constitution. [17:05:08] TAPPER: So, what about the critics point of view here? Why do people not want FISA to be reauthorized? What's their issue with it? MILLER: Well, groups like the Brennan Center for Justice or the ACLU say that FISA has created a broad backdoor where, yes, they're conducting foreign surveillance against spies and hackers, and terrorists, but that US persons are often being caught up in that collection, and it all goes into a big file which can be queried later. So they basically say it's an end run against the process that you would use to get a warrant. Donald Trump, of course, as Melanie told us, is leading the Kill FISA Act and trying to influence Congress, claiming that they spied on his campaign. But, of course, you'll remember there were allegations of foreign influence on the campaign that were picked up in FISA surveillance or, for instance, his national security adviser before he was in office, was captured on FISA talking to Russian officials overseas, and then lied about it to the vice president. So in Trumps world, this has touched a nerve, and it's probably the only time we will ever talk about Donald Trump and the ACLU being on the same page. TAPPER: All right. John Miller, thanks so much. Let's bring in Jamil Jaffer, Founder and Executive Director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University, Scalia Law School. He's the former counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security. Good to see you again. Thanks for being here. So from a national security perspective, is it a big deal if Congress doesn't reauthorize FISA, this part of it? JAMIL JAFFER, FORMER COUNSEL TO THE ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR NATIONAL SECURITY: I mean, it couldn't be more disastrous. Section 702 provides upwards of 50% of the information in the president's daily brief every day. That's the highest priority intelligence product the president reads. So without that collection, we are essentially deaf when it comes to signals intelligence without 702. TAPPER: Now, I believe it was this provision that allowed the NSA, I think it was the NSA, that was reading an email from bin Laden's bomb maker and realized that he was talking to somebody in Colorado. And that's the whole Zazi affair. They were supposed to -- they were going to conspiring to blow up the subways in New York. So it has been used correctly. JAFFER: Well, there's no doubt that section 702 provides some of those important intelligence, including on terrorists and foreign intelligence targets, and some of the cases involve disrupting terrorist plots here in the United States, identifying spies. We've identified threats overseas as well. So this could not be a more critical intelligence program. And by the way, President Trump, his administration, and the White House supported the last reauthorization even after the challenges with FISA were revealed. And by the way, it's worth noting, none of the authorities we're talking about today, which are about, as John pointed out, about the surveillance of foreigners located overseas, have anything to do with any surveillance of Americans in the United States at all, unless they're talking to somebody overseas that is being surveilled. JAFFER: Exactly right. TAPPER: So what is Trump's issue about FISA? There were FISA abuses that went on, went during Crossfire Hurricane, the operation that was looking into whether or not his campaign had ties to Russia. And by the way, there was outreach by Russians to the Trump campaign. That's just a factual matter. JAFFER: That's right. Well, one of the challenges we hear about this Carter Page matter, right? Carter Page was a Trump campaign associate. He was surveilled under Title 1 of FISA, not section 702. They went to a judge and got a court order to surveil him. The problem there was that in the reauthorization for that court order, one of the lawyers, frankly, changed the information, and was inaccurate and probably lied about what they understood, whether he was working for the US government. That resulted in the judge reauthorizing it. That lawyer, by the way, fired and prosecuted by the Justice Department for that problem. So, you know, President Trump is wrong about whether this was used to his campaign, it wasn't. And in fact, to the contrary, his administration, every major official, Mike Pompeo, Robert O'Brien, DNI John Ratcliffe, all support the reauthorizations, as do the 911 families. TAPPER: So today, in a phone interview with CNN, Trump's former Attorney General Bill Barr, he's on your side on this. He agrees that it should be reauthorized. And he said, as you just did, that the provisions that were set to be reauthorized today had nothing to do with what happened to Trump. So in his view, Trump's just barking up the wrong tree here. He has reason to be to object to what happened with the Carter Page situation. I don't think anybody disagrees with that because guy's been prosecuted, but it has nothing to do with this. JAFFER: That's exactly right. And in fact, something like this actually happened during the Trump administration, where his administration was seeking reauthorization on the day of the vote. President Trump got bad advice from some friend or somebody was talking to. He tweeted out. The administration immediately walked back that tweet. Now he's back at it again. [17:10:03] It's worth noting, by the way, in addition to the 19 Republicans that oppose going to the rule on this, 209 Democrats as well. So we're really playing with fire here. If this thing expires in a week from now, we are going to be essentially deaf to the critical civil intelligence that supports our national security at a time. There's a war in Ukraine, a war between Israel and Hamas, the Chinese are looking at us stealing our information. This is the worst possible time for us to be going deaf. It would be a disaster for the country. Republicans, Democrats need to get together, find a path forward, and vote. And by the way, the speaker was ready to have an up or down vote on this warrant question. A warrant, by the way, would be terrible for our national security, but he was willing to offer an up or down vote. So it's not clear why, other than what Donald Trump tweeted, why Republicans are opposed to having a fair vote on this bill. TAPPER: Well -- and you talk about that because some libertarians say section 702 violates the Fourth Amendment. Courts have ruled that questioning Americans found in the existing FISA database is not a separate search and does not require a warrant. But as you note, Johnson's made this -- Johnson made this offer, if you want to change it so that it's not warrantless, like you have to get a warrant. Why do you think that's a bad idea? JAFFER: Well, so a couple of things. One, what we know is that we have this data that's collected from targeting foreigners located overseas, saying to the FBI or the US government, hey, you got to lock that information in a drawer and not look at it. Even when you know an American is talking to a terrorist or a foreign intelligence officer. That's exactly the worst time for us to have the drawer locked, have to go to a federal judge to get a key to open that drawer, right? And by the way, if we want to collect on an American, you have to actually get a court order anyway. So all we're going to have is that one communication between an American and a foreigner. We can decide, do we want to go to a court and get more surveillance on that American, right. But the idea that we should lock it away, knowing there's information there for us to look at, right, when we might be in the heart of a terrorist plot or the like, that's crazy. We learned this lesson after 911. Don't create walls in the surveillance you've very lawfully collected. Doing a war requirement now would be to create that wall. But look, let's have a vote. Let's have it. Let's see what happens. And if people who support a warrant get their warrant, then they can be held responsible when if something goes wrong. TAPPER: Jamil Jaffer, thank you so much. Always good to have you on. Have you heard about this one? Speaker Johnson is going to Mar-a-Lago, Friday. He's going to have a news conference with Donald Trump. Their representatives say they have a "major announcement to make." What we know about that, that's coming up. Plus, we're standing by for a possible decision in Trump's latest attempt to delay the Stormy Daniels case, the hush money case. A hearing just wrapped, the trial is set to start Monday unless Donald Trump and his lawyers can delay it some more. Keep it here for what happened in that courtroom. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [17:16:42] TAPPER: And we're back with our Politics Lead. Just 48 hours from now, you will see House Speaker Mike Johnson and former President Donald Trump take the mics for a joint news conference. It's a huge event for the speaker who's under fire from what can accurately be called the MAGA caucus. Mr. Johnson, Speaker Johnson faces a threat to his job from that caucus. CNN's Kristen Holmes joins us now. Kristen, Donald Trump has not outright come out in support of Speaker Johnson. And so you have people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and others criticizing him, threatening to topple him. The timing of this press conference Friday, therefore, seems to me, and maybe I'm just skeptical, not a coincidence. KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it certainly doesn't seem like a coincidence. I mean, let's talk about what's actually happening here. You have Speaker Johnson, who Washington, DC- Louisiana, flying all the way down to Mar-a-Lago to give a press conference on an issue. They're talking about election integrity. This is something that Donald Trump cares deeply about. And to stand next to him -- TAPPER: There's a lot of quotes, let me just start with, election integrity -- quote -- HOLMES: -- they refer to. TAPPER: Yes, there we go. Election integrity, something that Donald Trump cares deeply about -- OK, thank you. Go ahead. HOLMES: I would say that he cares deeply about winning elections. TAPPER: Right. HOLMES: But I would say they refer to it as election integrity. TAPPER: Right. HOLMES: That's something billed as so obviously an issue that Donald Trump wants to talk about at a time where he really, Speaker Johnson, really needs Donald Trump's support. And I will tell you, I am being told that Speaker Johnson's team, even though they are here in Washington, is running point on this press conference. So that gives you some idea of how this might have come to be. Now, Donald Trump has to a number of Johnson's allies who have asked him to not weigh in on this at the very least, or to, at the very most, come out and support Johnson. It doesn't seem clear that he will. I do want to remind you that the person who brought this motion to vacate was Marjorie Taylor Greene, someone who is very close to Donald Trump speaks to Donald Trump more than Speaker Johnson speaks to Donald Trump, probably multiple times a week. So he's going to walk a fine line here. But I have been told by sources that Trump has said he doesn't want to go through another lengthy speaker battle. TAPPER: Yes. We should note also, just for the record, that this is not Speaker Johnson's first flirtation with election denialism when Texas, the attorney general there, offered that deranged legal brief in support of Donald Trump's claims. And he tried to have, I think, six states that had voted for Biden, all their electoral votes thrown out. It was then Congressman Johnson pushing an amicus brief for members of Congress to sign on to it, something that Liz Cheney has very strong feelings about. HOLMES: Right. Something you reported at the time that he actually sent from his personal email to every single GOP member of Congress, asking them to get on board and to get support behind this amicus brief. He is really largely considered a behind the scenes integral part of Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. That's one of the reasons why Donald Trump really got on board with him so quickly was because of that. Again, as you talk about, "election integrity," it really goes to show you where the Republican Party is now. He is the speaker of the House. On top of that, we know that Whatley, Chairman Whatley, Michael Whatley from North Carolina, whose sole interest is "election integrity" -- TAPPER: Yes. HOLMES: -- is now leading the RNC. TAPPER: Once again, election integrity. It means ways to get Donald Trump elected, et cetera, et cetera. Kristen Holmes, thanks so much. Breaking news, we've just gotten a ruling on Donald Trump's latest attempt to delay his hush money trial, which is set to start Monday in New York. Let's get straight to CNN's Paula Reid. [17:20:06] Paula, breaking news, what has the court decided? Are they going to delay the trial because Donald Trump has presidential immunity? PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: They are not. He is over three before the New York Court of Appeals this week. This was his third trip this week to the Court of Appeals, trying to get them to delay this hush money trial, which is scheduled to begin on Monday. Now, today's argument they made was that they believed they needed more time. They were asking the appeals court to delay Monday's trial to give them more time to litigate this issue of presidential immunity and also try to get the judge in the case to be recused. Now, this has been rejected, but this is not the last stop in the state of New York. They could potentially, Jake, now take this issue to the Court of Appeals, which is the highest court, the final destination for cases in the state of New York. Now, it's unclear if that court would indulge this appeal, but if they're able to get answer from that highest court in the state of New York, they would then have the option to possibly ask the Supreme Court to stay this case, the hush money case, while the Supreme Court considers the issue of presidential immunity in another case, in the federal election subversion case. That argument will be heard on April 25th. Now, I've talked to a couple lawyers, Trump aligned lawyers with expertise in this area. And I'm told, look, this is a possibility. But before they can go to the Supreme Court, they have to take this to the highest court in New York. So after this loss, we'll see what they do with this appeal. TAPPER: All right. Paula Reid, thanks so much for that breaking news. Appreciate it. Today, the chief of the US Capitol Police told Congress that his team is already preparing for next January certification of the presidential election, 2025. Chief Tom Manger says, "the cavalry will be on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2025, when Congress certifies electoral votes." Today's edition of Trump's hostages underscores why that cavalry is needed. This is where we remind you of the men and women who are not hostages, as Donald Trump continues to inaccurately describe them. They are defendants from the 2021 capital attack or convicted criminals, often convicted of violent crimes, often committed of violent crimes against law enforcement. Today's convicted criminal, today's Donald Trump January 6 hostage is named David Dempsey. David Dempsey is from Southern California, also known as #FlagGaiterCopHater. That's the name he gave himself, a nickname from the American flag over his face. Dempsey pleaded -- I'm sorry, he didn't give it to himself. That's what he was called. Dempsey pleaded guilty this past January to felony to two counts of assaulting an officer with a weapon. According to court documents, numerous videos capture Dempsey at the Capitol's lower west terrace. Prosecutors say that FlagGaiterCopHater made several outfit changes, but mostly kept this look. You see it there with the black shirt and the dark helmet, the goggles, complete with the American flag face cover. Prosecutors say that's Dempsey in images, using a crutch to strike police officers. He also used a long metal pole. Prosecutors also believe that Dempsey used a can of pepper spray on police officers. So with the mask and all, how did law enforcement track him down? Well, witnesses who knew Dempsey for years helped to positively ID him. One of the big clues, his hair tucked in the low bun, barely seen under the helmet. He also wore a distinctive yellow and black bracelet. You can see it in that picture. He's on social media from earlier wearing a similar bracelet. Dempsey was arrested seven months after the Capitol riot. He's in the DC jail. He's waiting to be sentenced in July. Again, no matter how many times Mr. Trump calls them hostages, they are not hostages. FlagGaiterCopHater is not a hostage, Mr. Trump. He's one on a long list of convicted criminals. A moment of justice and lengthy prison sentences for the goon squad. Police officers convicted of brutally torturing two innocent black men. That's next. [17:24:10] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)