We've learned
special counsel Jack
Smith is scrutinizing yet
another Oval Office
meeting
as part of his investigation into efforts
to overturn the 2020 election.
Sources tell
CNN prosecutors have asked
former US
officials about a February 2020 meeting
in which former President Donald Trump
praised the work done
to secure the upcoming
presidential election
and the expansion
of the use of paper
ballots and security around vote tallies.
Now, that's a stark contrast to the voter
conspiracy theories.
Trump publicly promoted just weeks later
and more aggressively in the run up
to the November election.
I don't want to see a crooked election.
This election
will be the most
rigged election in history.
They know it's it's
going to be fraudulent.
It's going to be fraud
all over the place.
I've been complaining
very strongly
about the ballots,
and the ballots are a disaster.
The revelation of this meeting comes
as the investigation
appears to be in its final stages.
With a D.C.
grand jury scheduled to meet this week.
So let's
bring in the team
with the exclusive reporting, CNN's
John Lingus and Evan Perez.
Sean, let's start with you.
What happened at this
February 2020 meeting?
Beyond that,
there was a lot that happened.
I mean, it was a
it was an election security briefing.
US officials walked through the ways
in which the election system was secure
in telling Trump about mail in ballots,
security audits for voting and a range of
of ways
in which the election would be protected.
And Trump,
according to our sources, even suggested
he was so impressed by the work done
to secure the elections
that he even suggested
doing a press conference
where he could take credit for that work.
So this is, as you say,
a contrast
to what he was saying just weeks later,
where he ramped up
conspiracy theories and was was
full bore in the boot camp of the fact
that the election
was not going to turn in his favor.
Barbara,
that is fascinating that we now know
he wanted to hold a press conference
to tout this.
But, Sean,
I do want to play a bit of what
Trump was saying in public
just a few weeks
after that meeting in April of 2020.
Take a listen.
The mail ballots, they cheat.
People cheat.
Mail ballots,
a very dangerous thing for this country
because they're cheaters.
They go and collect them.
They're fraudulent in many cases,
And Sean,
that was just a sample of what he said.
There was a lot more of this
kind of rhetoric. Right.
The rhetoric
escalated and exponentially really
So quietly in the weeks before
it started to escalate, you had him
acknowledging factual information
from from his briefers.
So that's why
we're told the special counsel's office
may be examining this meeting
because of what it says
about Trump's mindset and how he absorbed
very factual information
that was reiterated to him
and which remained true on Election Day.
Some of these
same protections are the reason why U.S.
officials declared the election
the most secure in U.S. history Brianna.
So, Evan,
what does this mean for
Jack Smith's investigations
into Trump's actions?
Well,
a couple of things we can draw from this
One of the things
is just the sheer breadth
of this investigation.
This is an investigation is reaching
way back into February of 2020.
And we know that the special counsel
has been really focused on
trying to understand
what the Trump what the former president
seemed to believe,
what he was being told by his experts.
And then what
he was being told by his non-experts.
These are people
who are telling him
that the invested
that the election was stolen by Venezuela
by Italian satellites,
by Chinese hacking.
So that's what
you know if you're the prosecutor
if that's what you want to
you want to focus on
to try to determine
whether he really believed this stuff
or whether this was all part of the act
that the former president was engaged in
as a way to overturn the election.
And this is coming
as we're waiting to hear
from the grand jury.
Evan, I do want you to weigh in
on new exclusive
reporting from CNN on new thousands
of documents related to Rudy Giuliani.
Explain the significance there.
Well, yeah,
this is a
reporting from our reporter read.
And this is only on Sunday
that the special counsel
was able
to get their hands on
these thousands of pages of documents
that were in the possession
of Bernie Kerik.
He was working alongside Rudy Giuliani
in this whole period
where they were trying to find
alleged fraud.
And this has been withheld, really, this
with the special counsel
to the January six
investigation on Capitol
Hill had sought this,
but he had never turned his over,
claiming that they were privileged.
Well, now,
as a result of some
litigation
from a couple of election workers,
in Georgia.
These documents are now
in the hands of the investigators
and are again,
they only got it on Sunday.
It really tells us
that there is so much more work
that they're doing behind the scenes,
even beyond
if we expect
that the grand jury
is going to be sitting tomorrow,
perhaps here in Washington,
they tend
to sit on Tuesdays and Thursdays and then
on an indictment could come any day,
it appears.
Certainly a lot of work
still left to be done
by this investigative team Brianna.
And more information
we continue to learn by the day.
Sean Links
and Evan Perez, great reporting.
Thank you. Next.
Let's bring in my panel,
Alyssa Farah Griffin,
Tom Dupre, and Bakari Sellers.
Great to see all of you.
So, Alyssa, I'm curious
to get your response
to this new reporting,
because you worked in the White House
around this time.
Did you notice a shift in the former
president's attitude
from praising election
security to all of a sudden doubting
it just a few weeks later?
This was remarkable to hear
because I'm familiar with that meeting
and I know there were others
where former CSO Chris Krebs
had briefed the former president
about just how secure
American elections were
and the many steps
that had been taken
to put us in a place
where we could truly trust
the institution of elections.
But it was about, I would say, April
or May of 20, 20
kind of the height of COVID.
And also the former president's
poll numbers
began to plummet
that he started raising doubts
about mail in voting.
And I actually remember
being in an Oval Office
meeting about that time
where the campaign called the president.
And I was sitting there and he
they basically said,
stop casting doubt on mail in voting.
You're going to depress your own voter
turnout.
So, I mean,
I don't want to try too hard
to get into the mind of Donald Trump.
But I think a motivating factor
in this entire election
myth, Big Lie, was the fact that he
for the first time
realized he might lose
and he wanted to start paving the way
for how he would say
he didn't truly lose. Yeah.
And this all speaks
to the issue of intent,
because if he was briefed on
these details,
seemed to be proud of them,
actually wanted
to hold a press conference.
What happened in those next few weeks
that changed his mind and about timing.
Tom, what do you make of the timing
and the difference
between the nine months here
before the election
and the change
in the president's tone and
view on election integrity?
Right.
Well, the
fact that nine months elapsed,
I don't think is going to be
hugely significant to the jury.
In other words,
if Jackson can persuade
the jury that Trump
genuinely thought our elections
were secure at the beginning of 20, 20,
it's unlikely
his opinion would have changed
by the end of 2020.
And look,
I think
what's significant here is that
although we may not want to get
into the mind of Donald Trump,
there are going to be some jurors
in Washington, D.C., if he is indicted,
who will be asked
to get into the mind of Donald Trump
and figure out
whether or not
he genuinely believed
this election was tainted
by fraud or not.
And so I think this evidence
of this cybersecurity meeting
will go a long way
and it will help
Jack Smith show
that President Trump knew
or should have known
that this election was not,
in fact,
tainted by fraud,
at least to the extent
that it could have resulted
in a different outcome
And Bakari, to that point,
after the 2020 election,
the Department of Homeland Security
released this statement saying, quote,
The November 3rd election
was the most secure in American history.
We know subsequently
that Chris Krebs had been fired
after that.
But the statement was,
we now know, based on the exact systems
that Trump had praised
during this 20, 20 election.
So what do you make of that?
Look, I think that the
actual firing
and the retaliation is something that
Jack Smith
and the grand jury
will take note of this meeting, though.
I'm not so certain
that it's going
to go a long way in convincing
someone that a crime was committed.
I understand
the fact that you have to prove intent
or mens rea.
I just don't think you get there
by proving
that Donald Trump is not smart
or he's not a smart man.
If that was the case,
then you can indict
half the United States Senate
So I don't think that's going to go far.
But I do believe that the treasure
trove of documents from Rudy Giuliani,
when you start turning
over people's emails,
when you start turning over
people's notes,
text messages, etc.,
that's going to go a lot further
than proving Donald.
Donald Trump just doesn't
believe in facts.
I mean,
that for me
doesn't really hold a great deal
of weight
firing someone for telling the truth.
That retaliation
maybe that sounds
more like a civil employment
came than anything else.
But the treasure trove of documents
for Rudy Giuliani
definitely has to start
getting Donald Trump nervous,
because what you notice on indictments,
people start, they start snitching up.
They always snitch up on the top target.
And that's what we're seeing here today.
You know, whether or not Meadows
speaks or Giuliani speaks,
all of those individuals
snitching up
is going to have
a detrimental effect on Donald Trump.
Also, do you agree
I mean, this treasure trove of documents
actually came way of Bernie Kerik,
who was advising the administration,
the former president's administration
there and his team.
What do you make of that news?
Yeah, I think that Bakari is right.
I mean, at the end of the day,
there's many folks
who are deeply loyal to Donald Trump.
But at the end of the day,
if they're risking
incriminating themselves,
I think they're going to end up
cooperating.
I think it's still very much
an open question
where Mark Meadows is in
this investigation, where others
and the fact
that at this point in time,
we don't know if anyone else
has received a target letter.
I think that that indicates
that there are people cooperating
with the grand jury
and trying to help the special counsel
and that that spells
a lot of trouble for Donald Trump.