Of a global pandemic. Carrico and wiseman were both professors at the university of pennsylvania. Executive Vice President of U Penn School of medicine said it has charned the world and indeed it has. Thanks for being with us. Id love to. The lead with jake tapper starts right now. Today donald trump called the judge overseeing his fraud case a trump hater. Im not sure that was a smart move. The lead starts rielg now. With millions of dollars on the line, and his future businesses in new york at stake, donald trump shows up for day one of His Civil Fraud Trial Blasting not only prosecutors, but insulting the very judge who will decide how much trump must pay in a case where hes already been found liable for fraud. And as trump pleads his case, here comes some shocking comments and a new warning from one of his former longest serving white house officials. This official going on the record setting the record straight only on the lead. Exclusively confirming a number of very damning details about donald trump himself. Plus, are the days numbered for Kevin Mccarthy as speaker of house . Republican congressman matt gaetz making some serious threats today. But will we see him follow through and will he have the votes . Welcome to the lead. Im jake tapper. And we start today with our Law And Justice lead. And donald trump turning a potentially devastating trial in new york no a campaign stop. The former president inside of the courtroom right now. Attending the first day of a civil fraud trial against him and the Trump Organization. But mr. Trump was not required to show up today, so why did he make an appearance . Mr. Trump, why did you want to be here in american today. Because i want to watch this witch hunt myself. This is a pure witch hunt for purposes of interfering with the elections of the United States of america. It is totally illegal. It is not totally illegal. It is perfectly legal and it is easy to see why donald trump is so unhappy about this trial in addition to the embarrassment, it hits at the core of the very identity that hes built up over decades. This image of a super wealthy, incredibly successful business man. Before the trial even started, the judge found trump and his codefendants liable for fraud. He already ruled they grossly inflated the values of their assets and properties for years. And that decision could spell the end of trumps Business Career in new york. That decision could cost him 250 million. If the new York Attorney general Letitia James who was also sitting in court today, just a few feet away from donald trump, gets her way. My message is simple. No matter how powerful you are, no matter how much money you think you may have, no one is above the law. And it is my responsibility and my duty and my job to enforce it. Now, if this notion of donald trump inflating his wealth, if it all sounds familiar, it is because this is not the first time mr. Trump has been caught lying about his wealth. You might remember in 2018, a former reporter for the magazine forbes came forward saying that trump phoned him way back in 1984 claiming to be his own spokesman, a guy named john barren. And john barron called this reporter to lie about Donald Trumps net worth. So that donald trump could secure a better place on forbes magazines list of forbes richest people. Here is just a snippet of the call. Here is john barren. Most of the assets have been consolidated to mr. Trump. Because you have trump, but i think you could use donald trump now and you could consolidate it. Now, the reason i even bring this old, old interview up is because it was raised in court today. One prosecutor said in his opening statement, while it may be one thing to exaggerate for forbes magazine, you cannot do it while Conducting Business in the state of new york. Now all of this, as a high ranking trump official goes on the record to me with his harshest criticism of trump to date. And in a warning about the threat trump seems to pose if elected in 2024 and that Exclusive Reporting is coming ahead an owe the lead. But we start in, in with cnns Brynn Gingras outside of the courthouse in new york city. What is happening in the courtroom right now . Reporter yeah, jake, well the states first witness is still on the stand. Dond bender was trumps and Trump Organization former accountant. Hes getting questioned about the state about particular Financial Statements which come into question for this entire trial. But lets begin with the Opening Statements which were earlier today on the states side, they basically presented a case to judge that trump and his sons and trump org, conspired together to commit years of fraud, inflating assets to get better interest rates, Better Business loans and essentially said they knew that they were doing, and theyre going to call a bunch of witnesses to the stand. One of them youre very familiar with, michael cohen. He will be called to the stand to show basically believe that they inflated these assets. If you remember, this whole case was brought based on Michael Cohens testimony to congress where he said, just that. Now on the defense side, the Defense Attorneys said what you already mentioned, that trump has made his billions off of a real estate Business Empire doing good business. And doing it by the book. Saying in sum, there is no illegality, there was no fraud. There are no victims. They even said that there were banks eager to do business with the trumps. Also eager is trump himself. We know that he wants to testify in this trial. We dont know when that is going to happen. But we do expect it. And coy tell you, jake, the the optics, hes made statement to the press about what is happening behind closed doors. But he has not acknowledged the Attorney General who made the statements at the courthouse steps behind me. Only acknowledging a little bit today but passing by her multiple times in this courtroom, only his son eric trump who is hitting behind him has gone over and shook her hand. But again, this is just a start of a very long civil trial were expecting it to last about three months, jake. Brynn gingras outside of the courthouse in new york. Thanks so much. Lets bring in laura coates and former prosecutor elie honig. Laura, lets start with the key legal argument for the legal team. The banks go the repaid with interest, so really this is a victimless crime. There are no victims. Everybody got paid back. Even if and i dont know that theyre granted the idea that theyre assets were over infla inflated, even if they were, where is the victim. Alls is well that ends well does not bode well in a courtroom of law when you have a number of things on the books that are victimless. Imagine if you will somebody who is soliciting to take drugs. They want the drugs and somebody sold it to them. Who is the victim here. You might have a john and a prostitute, where is the victim. A society is built by a number of laws because society is offended and even though shun was not been a victim, it is still nonetheless against the law and that is the core of the prosecutions argument. Is it doesnt matter if there wasnt an insurance issue or a tax benefit, but they claim there was. That you engaged in fraudulent behavior, misstating and misrepresenting that which is objective. You know what this Scare Footage is and what the cost is per square foot and youve inflated it for a number of reasons. This trial is less about whether a fraud was committed, though, jake, and more about what you sought to gain from that and that is where the notion of a victimless crime or not victimless is going to come into play. So elly, what is your response to that . Because let me give you my point of view. I dont want to impugn everybody in real estate. Im sure there are those fine up standing ethical men and women. But to me, it looks like a folks in real estate are shady and play with numbers and worth of assets all the time. I mean, look, obviously donald trump lies a lot. And obviously he inflates the worth of his properties and such. But the argument that i mean, look, this is a judge trial not a jury trial. But if this were a jury trial, i mean, the argument that look, no one got hurt and the banks and Insurance Companies got everything they wanted back and then some, i mean, might that not be convincing for a jury . Well i think there could be something to that. Let me give you the technical side of that first. The one count found for the Attorney General against donald trump, it doesnt matter if there is a Provable Victim or provable loss. That does matter with respect to the other six counts which are still at play in this trial. But, jake, i think bigger pike, people may look at this case and say were talking about tens and hundreds of millions of dollars why is this only a civil case and not a Criminal Case. Now, you to put yourself in the mind of d. A. , but there was no Provable Victim or not someone swindled out of money and robbed and never repaid, these were banks and got repaid with interest, still technically a civil violation. Could also technically be a criminal violation but it makes it a less appealing case to bring in the criminal context. So that is why this is a civil case and not a crim one. If i may. Laura coates on behalf of the people of the United States, how about the people, elli has been as well, how about the people that dont have who have tax that is owed and have to give the accurate assessment of the value of their property if their lucky enough to own it, according to the socalled american dream. If theyre able to secure a loan and in an industry which often times lays bear bias, whether it is implicit or otherwise, or algorithm based other wise. What about the people that say, alls well that did not end well because i dpnt have the benefit that trump did. I suspect a jury of people who have either tried to get a loan, who have had to pay their taxes, who have had to do that which is required, will look at it very differently. But again, now it is just a judge who im sure has to pay his taxes as well. Sure. It is a good argument. This case is going it be decided by a judge not a jury. Trump did not seek a jury trial. Why not . Why would they want a judge to decide this. Hes going to by the letter of the law and any of the emotional appeals or cynical appeals im making here. Wasnt that a mistake . Jake, lets give trumps lel team the benefit of the doubt and assume this was an intentional decision not to seek a jury trial. There is two reasons. The judge is sympathetic to you. And other is if you think you have a technical defense that you may not want to put in front of a jury but resonate better with a judge. Well see if this is part of the overall political and dramatic packaging of this. It is also possible that one of hi lawyers screwed and forgot to check the box. We dont know. It is happened before. Laura coates and elie honig. Catch laura on cnn tonight on 11 00 p. M. Eastern only here on cnn. As this case in new york plays out, prosecutors down in georgia are trying to line up witnesses for trial set to start in just three weeks. This is a Criminal Case and a key figure has been subpoenaed there. Coconspirators number five and known as bernie kerik. He wanted immunity first. Im going to talk to his attorney next. Plus californias historic appointment to the u. S. Senate and the contention this major move creates back home. Stay with us. And were back with our with more in ow Law And Justice lead in a separate Criminal Case involving donald trump. Today the Fulton County georgia District Attorney issued a subpoena to commissioner bernie kerik. His lawyer confirmed he is coconspirators number five in the indictment, in the Georgia Election subversion case. Prosecutors want keriks testimony later this month because they think he could potentially shed light on major events in this case. Gain given that he was in several meets with pennsylvania and arizona, two states that were contested by trump after the 2020 election. And with me keriks lawyer who have previously resigned from trumps legal team, tim parlatore. Bernie kerik was at a key meeting on november 25th, 2020 with a group of Pennsylvania Legislatives and then President Trump and along with mark meadows an Rudy Giuliani and jenna el is. Now Cassidy Hutchinson said this meeting touched on holding a special session of the Pennsylvania State legislature to appoint these fake electors, these trump electors. Why was bernie kerik at that meeting and were crimes discussed . So, bernie kerik was working with Rudy Giuliani as an investigator. So he aend itted a lot of meetings alongside Rudy Giuliani. And from my understanding and everything that ive discussed with mr. Kerik, and all of the evident ive seen, there was no criminality discussed whatsoever at that meeting. It was about different legislative actions that could be taken and everything was about doing things legally. Now you say that bernie kerik should be granted immunity in exchange for testifying. Why . What kind of testimony does he have to offer . Sure. So, you know, i dont know exactly what they want him to testify about. But the Fulton CountyDistrict Attorneys Office Reached out to me and they were demanding that he come down and testify and i said to them, look, you have publicly identified him as being a coconspirators and the Supreme Court case law and this is very clear, when you publicly accuse someone of a crime and then want to compel them to come in and testify, they have a Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination. So in competent criminal lawyer would allow tim to answer questions. Hes going to plead the fifth. Are you planning on giving him immunity . And this is one thing that i think has been lost today. We didnt ask for immunity. And mr. Kerik isnt seeking immunity. If they want him to testify, then the hurdle that they have to overcome so that he wont plead the fifth is they have to give him immunity. But you said they publicly identified him but he was an unnamed coconspirators, wasnt he . Well it is been pretty clear who a lot of these coconspirators are. And so when they describe someone like that, coconspirator number five is clearly mr. Kerik and your network has been on top of that as far as identifying all of these people. So simply the fact that they didnt say his name in the document doesnt change the fact that they have identified him by his actions as being a member of this conspiracy. And that is something that then implicates the Fifth Amendment. So you say prosecutors have told you, quote, if we waned to indict mr. Kerik, we would have already done so. And your client is one of 30 unindicted coconspirators in your case. So it doesnt seem like fani willis might suddenly decide to go after your client. It seems like based on what they told you, that they dont want to indict him. They want him to testify. Does he have did he witness any criminality . Does he have testimony that is worth his testimony . Well, this from my understanding, he does not have anything that would indicate criminality by the president , by Rudy Giuliani, or any member of the giuliani team. Would he potentially be helpful in a case against Sidney Powell. I think he would. And i think that is kind of a wrinkle to this case that is difficult on a whole bunch of different levels. So i could see why they would want him to testify relevant to Sidney Powell. But, if youre not willing to give him the basic protections that any normal prosecutor in any other prosecuting office in the country would do, then you are just not going to be able to force him to testify. Is Sidney Powell the only one that he might have evidence against or testimony against . Are there other individuals that he might have witnessed something that is worth discussing . In this group, it is primarily Sidney Powell. Because the testimony that he has is that Rudy Giuliani and his whole team, they were pursuing leads. They were hampered by lack of time. A lack of resources and so that prevented them from being able to chase everything down completely. It certainly did lead to certain inaccuracies. But when they talk about people putting out knowingly false claims, kerik and others will point right over at Sidney Powell and say, hey, what theyre accusing us of, she did. And then hes going to be able to testify about that is why she was fired. That is why President Trump told her she wasnt allowed back in the white house. It is actually in a weird way very ex cul pattory to Rudy Giuliani to say yeah, there was somebody doing something wrong, Sidney P