0:00

Head to netsweet.com/briefing now for

0:02

their one-of-a-kind flexible financing program.

0:08

At the CNN presidential debate on

0:10

Thursday, CNN's Jake Tapper asked former

0:12

President Donald Trump about his role

0:14

in the January 6 attack on

0:16

the U.S. Capitol in 2021. What

0:20

do you say to voters who believe that you

0:22

violated that oath, threw your actions and inaction on

0:24

January 6, and worried that you'll do it again?

0:26

I don't think too many believe that. And let

0:28

me tell you about January 6. On

0:31

January 6, we had a great

0:33

border. Trump repeatedly

0:35

sidestepped the question. He deflected about

0:37

accepting the election results in November

0:39

before finally saying he would if

0:41

it's a, quote, fair and legal

0:43

and good election. The only person

0:45

in this stage is a convicted felon, is the man

0:47

I'm looking at right now. And

0:49

the fact of the matter is, he isn't. What

0:52

he's telling you is simply not true. President

0:54

Biden made the point there. Trump has already

0:57

been convicted of 34 felony counts, but

1:00

there are multiple criminal cases still

1:02

in motion, one of them directly

1:04

related to his efforts to overturn

1:06

the 2020 election. Well,

1:08

on Friday, the Supreme Court handed down

1:10

a major ruling dealing with the aftermath

1:13

of the January 6 riot at the

1:15

Capitol. But this one wasn't

1:17

about presidential immunity. My

1:22

guest today is CNN Supreme Court reporter

1:25

John Fritzi. We're going to break

1:27

down why we're still waiting for that

1:29

decision and look at another ruling that

1:31

is sending shockwaves through the entire federal

1:33

government. From CNN, this

1:35

is One Thing. I'm David Ryan.

1:44

So you're literally in the Supreme Court right now.

1:46

Correct. I'm in the building. He's in the building.

1:49

So, John, we've reached the end of

1:51

June, but the court hasn't finished its work

1:53

yet. What's up with that? Everything

1:56

has been slow this term. Cases that we

1:58

thought would come pretty quickly. have

2:00

taken weeks and sometimes months. Certainly

2:03

the one that everybody is paying attention to

2:06

is the Trump immunity case. And that one

2:08

in particular, I think a

2:10

lot of folks were hoping that would come quickly

2:12

and sort of resolve this issue. And

2:15

now it appears that that case is not gonna come

2:17

until the very last day of the term. We

2:19

have a sense of that because the chief

2:21

always announces on the penultimate day when the

2:23

next and final day is. And

2:26

he said that would be Monday.

2:28

So we've got some additional

2:31

cases outstanding, but that's the biggie. And

2:33

that means we are almost

2:35

certain to get that decision on

2:37

Monday. Right, remind me about this

2:39

immunity case because it's about special

2:42

counsel Jack Smith's election related charges

2:44

against Trump. But like what are

2:46

the other possible outcomes here? That's

2:49

right. So Donald Trump came

2:51

into court looking for very broad immunity

2:55

covering all sorts of actions. And it

2:58

didn't seem clear to me from based on the arguments

3:00

at least that he was gonna get that, but I

3:02

do think there's a good chance he gets something. There's

3:05

a lot of debate about sort of

3:07

official action versus private conduct. And the

3:10

court seemed pretty clear in argument that

3:12

there was some thought that maybe official

3:14

action should have some sort of immunity.

3:16

And that gets to this point you're

3:18

arguing about, well, it's not just about

3:20

Trump, right? Several of the justices, I

3:22

think, are

3:24

thinking about the longer term impacts about this,

3:27

about future presidents. And

3:29

presidents do have immunity

3:31

from civil litigation based

3:34

on an earlier Supreme Court decision. And

3:36

based on sort of the same idea,

3:38

which is that you don't really want

3:40

a former president to be hit with

3:42

a bunch of lawsuits, right? Maybe some of them

3:44

politically motivated. And so that was that case. This

3:46

is kind of what Trump has been arguing out

3:49

on the campaign trail. Like presidents won't be able

3:51

to do anything or send trips into war, that

3:53

kind of thing. That's exactly right, that's his argument.

3:55

This isn't just me, this is all president. They

3:58

have to be given immunity, otherwise they're gonna. to

4:00

be unable to act. Anything

4:02

they do, if it goes wrong, even if

4:05

it goes right. And he points to all

4:07

these other presidents that he claims have things

4:09

that are prosecutable. I think that's, that's debatable.

4:11

Otherwise, take a look at Harry

4:13

Truman. He wouldn't have done, if

4:15

you think Hiroshima, not

4:17

exactly a nice act, but it did end the

4:19

Second World War, probably. Right?

4:22

Nagasaki, he wouldn't be doing that. He said, I

4:24

don't want to do that because my,

4:27

my opponents will indict me. What

4:30

I do think though, is that private

4:32

conduct, it seemed to me based on

4:34

argument that a lot of the justices were not

4:36

going there, not buying that. So I think the

4:38

real thing to watch for in this opinion is

4:40

how the court settles that issue,

4:43

you know, official conduct versus private, and then

4:45

what sort of standard it sets for determining

4:47

that, right? Because it's not always clear what's

4:50

official and what's private. And so I think that's the

4:52

kind of the key thing to look out for. I want

4:54

to go to Wolf Blitzer now with some breaking news.

4:57

Major breaking news coming from the US Supreme

4:59

Court right now. There's been a decision

5:01

on a very, very important and sensitive

5:03

issue. Well, so tell me about

5:06

this other case that we did get today

5:08

as we speak on Friday, as it

5:10

relates to January 6 writers,

5:13

like does this relate to Trump at all? There

5:15

was a lot of speculation and talk heading

5:18

into this case that it could relate to

5:20

Trump. Two of Trump's charges involve the

5:23

same statute, the same prohibition that's at

5:25

issue in the J6 case. However,

5:27

the Justice Department made very

5:29

clear, a special counsel made very clear

5:31

early on in briefing that even if the

5:33

case turned out the way that it did

5:36

today, that they would continue to pursue the

5:38

charges against Trump. And that's because, you know,

5:40

Trump didn't barrel his way into the Capitol

5:42

himself, right? He's being charged under these charges

5:45

for sort of a different reason, which is

5:47

this idea of tampering

5:49

with evidence, in this case, tampering with

5:51

the certification of electoral votes. And so

5:54

that's a kind of a different thing

5:56

than the folks that we saw, you

5:58

know, just in the end. well,

10:00

two abortion cases we've had that have

10:03

been decided on very narrow grounds, very

10:05

sort of technical grounds. Most

10:08

recently, a per curiam decision, an

10:10

unsigned decision from the court dealing

10:12

with emergency abortions in Idaho. And

10:15

you know, the court had looked at this for several months

10:17

and sort of kind of did

10:19

a judicial version of throwing up its hands

10:21

and said, you know, we're not going to

10:24

decide this right now. We shouldn't have agreed

10:26

to decide it in the first place. And

10:28

what it did in that case was that it lifted

10:31

the prohibition that

10:33

it didn't put in place, which the

10:36

upshot of that is it'll it'll it

10:38

bars Idaho from enforcing its very strict

10:40

ban on abortions. You

10:43

know, it's a victory for

10:45

Biden in a sense. But

10:48

it also, you know, abortion

10:50

rights groups are very clear to point out that, hey,

10:52

this is a really temporary reprieve. There's already a case

10:55

pending on the same issue on the Supreme Court's side.

10:57

It's going to be back there before long. I mean,

10:59

in a blink of an eye, it's going to be

11:01

back. And, you know, in a year that's not an

11:03

election year, and maybe the justices feel more empowered to

11:05

decide. So I think there's a

11:08

lot of weariness about that decision among abortion rights

11:10

groups. Is that a win for Biden? Yes, technically,

11:13

but maybe not a long term one. Interesting.

11:15

John, my last question is, like, is

11:17

the Supreme Court OK? Because that Idaho

11:20

abortion decision actually was inadvertently posted online

11:22

early before they officially released it. And

11:24

we saw that Dobbs leak two years

11:26

ago. We've seen reporting from ProPublica about

11:29

how Clarence Thomas took all these fancy

11:31

trips paid for by wealthy donors that

11:33

he didn't fully disclose. You have these

11:35

stories about Justice Alito and his wife

11:38

and all their flags flying at their

11:40

house. Like, what is happening with this

11:42

institution that is supposed to be, you

11:45

know, kind of above it all and

11:47

have it stuffed together? Yeah, well, it's

11:49

certainly not above it all this term. It's

11:52

just it's just a tough time for the Supreme Court.

11:54

Certainly all those things you

11:56

mentioned, approval ratings are dramatically low.

11:59

There's a lot of particularly on the left

12:01

about the Roe decision two years ago,

12:04

you're right. This opinion,

12:07

inadvertent opinion posting was

12:09

remarkable. I haven't seen

12:11

that kind of a thing before. It's very different, I

12:13

think, than the leak a few years ago

12:15

in the Dobbs case, right? That was sort of an

12:17

intentional thing. This appears to be inadvertent. Who

12:22

knows why it happened or what's happening with it.

12:24

It is the case that we've

12:26

got a lot of big opinions coming here at

12:28

the end. There's a lot of attention on it.

12:31

A lot of stuff's crunched in maybe

12:33

accidents can happen. I don't know, but you're

12:35

right. The court is in

12:37

a very much a defensive posture right now

12:39

and has been for the last couple of

12:41

terms. Yeah, very defensive.

12:43

And we'll see what happens on Monday

12:45

with this immunity case and any others

12:47

they issue. John Fertze there at the

12:50

court, really appreciate it. Hey, thank you so much. And

13:02

I really appreciate all of your time here. And

13:05

now, we can go to the next couple of days and see if we can do anything.

13:10

One Thing is a production of CNN

13:12

Audio. This episode was produced

13:14

by Paolo Ortiz and me, David Rind.

13:16

Our senior producer is Fez Jamil. Our

13:18

supervising producer is Greg Peppers. Matt

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Dempsey is our production manager. Dan

13:23

D'Zula is our technical director and Steve Likty

13:25

is the executive producer of CNN Audio. Steve

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Steinhardt, James Andres, Nicole Pesserou, and

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Lisa Namaro. Special thanks to Katie

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Hinman. We'll be back on Wednesday. I'll

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