The Lead with Jake Tapper Aired June 05, 2024 - 16:00 ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. [16:00:02] … (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [16:59:27] JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: …leading this hour, brand new CNN reporting, what Donald Trump is saying about the possibility of going to prison for his conviction in that New York hush money cover-up case. … The Lead with Jake Tapper Aired June 05, 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: Let's get straight to CNN's Kristen Holmes in Phoenix where Donald Trump holds a town hall meeting tomorrow. It will be his first campaign event since being convicted in the New York criminal hush money trial. Kristen, let's start with your new reporting. Trump is actually talking about a future behind bars? KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jake, this just goes to show you how hard it is to be a communications person around Donald Trump and try to control the narrative because Trump himself always controls the narrative. Now, if you talk to any of his senior advisors, they are making no plan for him to go to prison. His lawyers believe they have a good case for him not to go to prison. They say his age, the fact that he doesn't have any kind of criminal record makes that case and they are insisting that they -- he will not go to prison. However, Donald Trump is making his own personal phone calls privately saying that he thinks he could very well be behind bars and that he is OK with it. I will note that almost anyone you talked to who knows Donald Trump does not think he would actually be OK with going to prison. But that is what he is telling people. TAPPER: And you also have some reporting on this vetting process in the search for Trump's running mate. HOLMES: Yes, things are really starting to heat up and they have in the last several weeks. Several of those potential vice presidential contenders did receive documents and request for documents to be vetted to be a potential vice presidential candidate to be at the top of the ticket. Now it's unclear who exactly got them. But as CNN has continued to report, we know several names that have been told to us that are at the top of the list that includes Doug Burgum, Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, as well as Elise Stefanik, and Tim Scott. This just goes to show you where this process is. I will say that if you talk to anyone around Donald Trump, they say that yes, these did go out. However, Donald Trump will ultimately decide it won't be a vetting process that picks the vice presidential candidate. TAPPER: All right. Kristen Holmes, thanks so much for your reporting. And this just in, at least one of those high profile names floated as a contender to be Donald Trump's vice president denies that he's being vetted. Let's get right to CNN's Manu Raju on Capitol Hill. Manu, who are we talking about here? MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Marco Rubio of Florida Republicans, someone of course ran against Donald Trump in 2016 in a pretty vicious campaign, but things have changed over the years. And now Rubio is very much aligned with Donald Trump. But in speaking to a group of reporters, just moments ago, he was asked about whether or not he is actually being vetted or has been contacted by the campaign. And he indicated at the moment he is not. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Have you been reached out to the Trump campaign that's part of the vetting process? SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): No, I haven't talked to the Trump campaign. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No information? RUBIO: No. RAJU: Have they asked for any documents from you? RUBIO: I haven't talked to them about vice president. I talk to you guys about vice presidents, but not them. (END VIDEO CLIP) RAJU: So, the question is, if that will change, if there's been any discussions with any intermediaries, Rubio very much making clear there, Jake, though, there has not been much back and forth with the Trump campaign at the moment. But we'll see if things change as we get closer to the Republican convention. TAPPER: We should also note they're currently from the same state so that would be problematic. I guess Trump would have to move back to New York or Rubio would have to move to Georgia. I don't know. Manu Raju, thanks so much. Appreciate it. As Trump comes to terms with his guilty verdict, he and a significantly large group of allies are plotting revenge. "The New York Times" lays it all out in a piece titled "The GOP Push for Post- Verdict Payback: Fight Fire with Fire." The plan according to the reporters, a prosecutorial blitz Republicans who have accused Democrats of using the law to go after a political opponents. What they call law fair are now saying they should respond in kind. And Charlie Savage joins us now he's one of the" New York Times" reporters behind the start. So Charlie, a large number of Trump allies wants elected Republicans to take retaliatory action right now even before the election. What specifically are they pushing for? CHARLIE SAVAGE, NATIONAL SECURTY & LEGAL REPORTER, 'THE NEW YORK TIMES": The idea here is that Republican district attorneys and prosecutors and states around the country should be looking for opportunities to bring charges against Democrats, especially high level Democrats to fight fire with fire. The premise being that all the indictments against Trump, including that one which has now been converted into felony convictions are simply a conspiracy by Joe Biden in the White House to invent cases out of thin air. And so they should be doing the same thing as opposed to cases that were based on evidence. TAPPER: But we just reported earlier on the Senator Menendez on the on the -- you know, being tried in New York, Hunter Biden being tried in Delaware. There's an indictment against Democratic Congressman Cuellar in Texas. How do they respond to that, the fact that Democrats are obviously being prosecuted? SAVAGE: That -- those facts are inconvenient for the conspiracy theory that the Biden administration has weaponized the Justice Department for its own political ends and so they tend to ignore those cases. [17:05:10] TAPPER: Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist that Trump told you that now was the moment for obscure Republican prosecutors around the country to try to make a name for themselves by prosecuting Democrats, he said, quote, "There are dozens of ambitious backbencher state attorneys general and district attorneys who need to seize the day and own this moment in history." Is this idea of really feasible? SAVAGE: You know, district attorneys around the country are going to have a harder time going after national political figures. They only have state law to work with, they need to have jurisdiction, which means the thing needs to have happened in their space. You could see perhaps a red -- a very, you know, Republican conservative prosecutor in a purple state like Georgia that has U.S. senators who are Democrats trying to find some kind of state tax crime against those senators. But it's not like Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is running around, you know, rural Alabama and doing things that then could be a source of a crime. So I think this may be more heat than substance, unless and until Trump is reelected, in which case, he gains control of the U.S. Justice Department and then all bets are off. TAPPER: From what you've learned in your reporting, what sort of revenge might be enacted if Trump is reelected to the White House? What would his justice department theoretically do? SAVAGE: Well, one of the things that we would be a repeat of a previous playbook is to investigate the investigators. Some of the people that we quoted in an article are already calling for that. The note just as the Trump administration and Attorney General Bill Barr created, the Special Counsel John Durham investigation was spent four years trying to find a basis to bring criminal charges against high level Obama administration officials as revenge for the Russia investigation, but was unable to find enough sufficient evidence to do so. I think they want to go after anyone who had anything to do with the Trump cases. And so, that would be one starting place. In addition, of course, they -- Trump himself keeps saying he's going to, you know, appoint a real special prosecutor to go after Biden and his son and the whole so called Biden crime family. Again, that's a little hard to square with the fact that Hunter Biden is currently on trial by a special counsel and a special counsel looked at Biden's, you know, mishandling of classified documents and concluded there was insufficient evidence to bring charges over that matter. But -- so bring -- assigning a real special counsel seems to mean get someone who will bring charges regardless. TAPPER: Your piece says, quote, "The intensity of anger and open desire for using the criminal justice system against Democrats after the verdict surpasses anything seen before in Mr. Trump's tumultuous years in national politics. What is different now is the range of Republicans who are saying retaliation is necessary and who are no longer cloaking their intent with euphemisms," unquote. Was there any Republican in particular whose reaction surprised you? SAVAGE: But you were just talking about Marco Rubio, he put out a tweet about fighting fire with fire in this context, that can only mean one thing. I think that more broadly, what you're getting there, what we're getting at there is it used to be only the most extreme sort of MAGA Republicans who would play with this idea of let's just use our control of the Justice Department to achieve political ends to go after our adversaries as an into itself. And especially since this verdict, we're seeing this sort of mainstreaming of this rhetoric, and this notion that if Democrats aren't equally persecuted with politicized investigations and prosecutions, then this will just get out of hand and there needs to be mutually assured destruction, so Democrats will stand down. Again, the premise of all this is the cases against Trump were not based on evidence. In fact, they were just, you know, invented for political reasons. From that premise, comes the notion, well, we could do the same thing. But in the real world, you would have to find an actual evidence of a crime to do something. TAPPER: Charlie Savage, thanks so much. Coming up more on how Republicans are working on ways to turn their anger over Donald Trump's criminal convictions into action. What might that look like? Plus, a dramatic story of one of the heroes who helped save lives and save democracy when the U.S. changed the course of the world along with the Brits and the Canadians on D-Day. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [17:14:00] TAPPER: And we're back with our politics lead talking about how the Republican Party's anger over Donald Trump's guilty verdicts could soon turn to action. Our panel is here. Mike Dubke, let's listen to what Trump himself said about this issue on Newsmax. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's a terrible precedent for our country. Does that mean the next president does it to them? That's really the question. It's a terrible, terrible path that they're leading us to. And it's very possible that it's going to have to happen to them. (END VIDEO CLIP) TAPPER: You know, Trump, you serve under Trump in the White House. Where do you see him taking this should he be elected in November? MIKE DUBKE, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: I think -- well, it's not just President Trump. I think Republicans across the board are upset with what does the term law fair is out there. I think we're going to hear that more and more during the campaign. I think Republicans are upset that it does feel like he was targeted with -- TAPPER: By Alvin Bragg. By the district attorney. DUBKE: Alvin Bragg ran on targeting Donald Trump. TAPPER: I don't know that that's actually true. DUBKE: I believe -- [17:15:00] TAPPER: I know that the Letitia James, the attorney general in New York -- DUBKE: Yes. TAPPER: -- she definitely did. But people have said that and I'm not -- DUBKE: I think if we go back and check out the videotape I think we can prove that that Bragg, regardless -- TAPPER: Yes. DUBKE: -- they're upset, they're upset with this. And look, we're seeing this across the board. You also, you know, folks -- Republicans think Trump was targeted. We had Republicans today that think Hunter Biden on this particular charge was targeted. We're now starting to use the legal forums as political forums. And I suspect that if President Trump reelected, doesn't pursue it, that members of the party in the House and Senate would as well. There's there seems to be this devolution when it comes to this. Very similar when I was thinking about this to the nuclear option when Harry Reid imposed we don't need majority -- we don't need cloture votes on -- TAPPER: You don't need 60 people to close, yes. DUBKE: I mean, look where we are now with the Supreme Court. And these things just manifest itself and pick up speed and roll down the hill. TAPPER: So Meghan, take a listen to the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, asked about all this on Fox earlier today. (END VIDEO CLIP) NEIL CAVUTO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Are you weaponizing the House the same way -- REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), HOUSE SPEAKER: No. CAVUTO: You say Democrats weaponizing the DOJ to get what they wanted? Are you just doing it in a bigger platform the entire House of Representatives? JOHNSON: No. No, there is a very clear distinction. Democrats and the far left have pushed this pendulum too far. It's going to begin to swing back. And we have to do our job here in Congress to assist with that to hold these people accountable and to ensure that the law is being adhered to. That's the effort that you'll see play out here in the coming weeks. (END VIDEO CLIP) TAPPER: It's a good question from Neil Cavuto because I know there are Democrats who feel like the House Oversight Committee, etcetera, is politicizing their responsibilities. MEGHAN HAYS, FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO PRESIDENT BIDEN: Yes, I do think they're politicizing it. But they're also not getting what they want at the end of the day. I mean, Democrats, as we've seen for the past couple of months now are really the ones in power. Mike Johnson needed them to save his job. But also on Alvin Bragg running like Trump was found guilty by a jury of his peers of 12 people, so that's great that he might have run on that, but he was also found guilty by 12 different people. So it's kind of rich of him to say that. TAPPER: Do you have concerns at all about, let's assume that that Republicans do go down this road and start going -- let's -- for the sake of argument, let's say that, again, this is just for the sake of argument, that Donald Trump did commit those misdemeanors, but they should not have been felonies. OK. That's -- DUBKE: OK. TAPPER: And that the district attorney making them into felonies was law fair in this theory? DUBKE: Yes. TAPPER: Do you have concerns about Republicans doing the same to Democrats? Isn't that just -- DUBKE: I personally do have concerns that this is -- as I said earlier, it is going to devolve that we are going to see this on both the left and the right. I mean, unfortunately, on both the left and the right, we have elected officials that sometimes care more about how much time they get on television or how much money that they can raise to small dollar donors because of their salacious -- their -- TAPPER: Hyperbolic. DUBKE: -- e-mails. TAPPER: Yes. DUBKE: And less about governing the country. And this is one form of that. TAPPER: What do you think? Do you have any concern about it? HAYS: No, I have a lot of concern that former President Trump is reelected. I mean, he has already said that he will have revenge and he will do these things. He doesn't have respect for the rule of law. It's a huge contrast. TAPPER: I mean, if you have any concern about your party may be doing some of the same? Like the Alvin Bragg case was a -- it was a novel theory, the way it was applied. HAYS: Right. TAPPER: And even people who do not like Trump aren't necessarily fans of what was done. Do you have any concerns about that? HAYS: No, I don't. I also think we have a president who has a ton of respect for the rule of law, just the way he's handling the Hunter case right now shows you that he's trying not to politicize it. He's been very, very clear about he is a father and being supportive. So I just think it's different in the contrast of it. DUBKE: I just -- we've got Wisconsin, we've got Arizona, we've got Nevada, we've got Georgia, we've got all these states, battleground states that elected to wait three and a half, three years to file charges. TAPPER: Are you talking about the fake elector scheme? DUBKE: Absolutely. TAPPER: Yes. DUBKE: Now, is there there there? Probably. But why would you wait three years? Why would you wait to the -- to election season? And in every case, it's a battleground state and it's a Democratic prosecutor. So I respectfully disagree that Democrats aren't already taking it now. TAPPER: To be continued. You're both great. Thank you for being here. Appreciate it. We do have some breaking news. It's a busy afternoon and breaking news on The Lead. Law enforcement sources are telling CNN that the suspect charged in New York's Gilgo Beach serial killings will now be charged with additional murders. CNN's Jean Casarez is with me on this breaking news. Jean, what do we know about these new charges? JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we were just able to confirm that it is expected that tomorrow in Long Island that Rex Heuermann who has already been charged with four murders will be charged now with two more alleged serial killer murders. First of all, we're learning the name of Jessica Taylor. Now Jessica Taylor, her partial remains were found in the year 2003 in a marshy area in Manorville. It's sort of a forest area. [17:20:08] And it is a month ago that law enforcement was searching that area, but it was 2003. They were initially found -- other remains were found in 2011. And then also Valerie Mack, whose remains were found in the year 2000 in that same area, additional remains in 2011. Now these two women were sex workers, we do not know how Rex Heuermann was linked to them through forensics. We do know that with the previous victims, it was sex worker ads, burner phones from him, cell phone tower pings when both the sex worker and he were in the Massapequa area, and then the disappearance of the victim. So we know that was the timeline with the previous victims we don't know. But here's what stands out, Jake. Number one, this shows that he allegedly began killing victims much earlier because the other four were deceased, and it was believed that they were deceased in 2007, 2009, and 2010 right in that area. So this is the early 2000s. So it shows a more expansive time period. Secondly, another thing that is very important here is that there were body parts that were found. And so the possibility is that these victims were dismembered, if not animals can carry those remains even to distant areas, but was the modus operandi of this alleged serial killer different early on than what it was in the later years. And law enforcement is telling through sources to John Miller who got this information that this is just the beginning of this information. TAPPER: All right, Jean Casarez with some shocking news about the Gilgo Beach serial killer. Thank you so much. Coming up a stunning headline and a ferocious response from the White House, one of the President's closest allies is here to respond to the latest discussion and attacks on Joe Biden's age. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [17:26:37] TAPPER: In our world lead today, King Charles and Queen Kamala -- Camilla, sorry, commemorated the sacrifices and bravery of World War II veterans. This is on the eve of D-Day in Portsmouth, England. On the other side of the channel, President Biden arrived in France to mark the 80th anniversary of when U.S. and allied forces the Brits and the Canadians all stormed the beaches of Normandy to defeat Nazi Germany. There are fewer than 200 World War II veterans who are still alive we're expected to return for one last big reunion tomorrow. Now for one member of the CNN family, our bureau chief here in Washington DC Sam Feist, tomorrow ceremony is going to be deeply personal. And CNN's Tom Foreman brings us his story. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the thundering wake of nearly 160,000 allied troops who stormed ashore on D-Day, here came another across the sands of Normandy, 24-year-old Herbert Feist, an American soldier with a suitcase and a secret power. SAM FEIST, CNN WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF: He could be invisible, and that's what he did. FOREMAN (voice-over): To understand what his grandson Sam means we have to back up. Herbert was born to a Jewish family in Berlin, German to the core, and his parents urging he fled the rise of the Nazis and their antisemitic purges before the war. FOREMAN: Fifteen years old, he gets a visa and by himself leaves Germany to come here. FEIST: On a ship from Hamburg to New York, and didn't speak English. FOREMAN (voice-over): But the blue eyed blond haired young man did speak German. So as his father was swept into the Buchenwald work camp in Germany, and America charged toward battle, young Herbert enlisted in his new country found a powerful asset. FEIST: His job is to be an intelligence officer. And across the frontlines, behind the lines, whatever it took because he knew German, and he was German, and he sounded like a German. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where are you going, General? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Berlin. FOREMAN (voice-over): With legendary General George Patton's Army, Herbert Feist, storms across Europe, spying behind German lines, questioning prisoners, proving his mettle for America. Afraid? FEIST: Of course. And he knew what the consequences would be for a American soldier who was Jewish, particularly a German refugee. FOREMAN (voice-over): Herbert's father had slipped away from Buchenwald just before the war began taking advantage of a rare pass and a tip from a guard, joining Herbert's mother for a desperate race to the U.S. And as the Nazis fell, Herbert saw what his parents would have surely faced. FEIST: He liberated Buchenwald and the photos that he took with his little Kodak camera are as bad as any Holocaust movie you've ever seen. He never talked about it his entire life. Only right before he died did he actually tell the stories that I'm sharing with you now. FOREMAN (voice-over): It is proper that Sam is sharing his grandfather's stories. Sam Feist is the Washington bureau chief for CNN overseeing all the pools coverage of this D-Day anniversary. [17:30:02] FEIST: As I think about my grandfather, I think about the veterans that I'm going to meet in Normandy on this anniversary, it's just powerful. It's unbelievably powerful that this group of Americans would travel to a distant continent to fight for both us, Americans back home, and also for people in Europe that they didn't know. FOREMAN (voice-over): Herbert Fies (ph), passed away at 86. Forever proud to be German by birth, American by choice, once in war now at peace. (END VIDEOTAPE) FOREMAN (on camera): It didn't sound a long time and I've never really heard that story until recently, but as he noted, he didn't know it until recently, like so many members of the greatest generation, his grandfather just didn't talk about these things. He was a young man. The country saw an opportunity in him, a rare and special opportunity because here was a German who had come to join them. And he bravely went in did what they asked, just because they asked it, and then he went on with his life. Remarkable story. TAPPER: It's a really -- it's a -- it's -- I got chills from it Tom. It's a great story. And I hope, Sam -- I hope, Sam and Normandy is finding it a meaningful experience. I got to go about 10 years ago, and it is just powerful seeing all those veterans and looking at that intimidating shoreline. Tom Foreman, thank you so much. Appreciate it. One of President Biden's closest allies is going to join me to talk about that blistering "Wall Street Journal" report. I'm going to ask him what he thinks about the insinuations that the President is aging out of the job. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) …