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LEGAL VIEW WITH ASHLEIGH BANFIELD

Trump Attacks Cruz-Kasich Plan; Race for the White House; Brady's Suspension Restored; Manhunt in Ohio. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired April 25, 2016 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[12:00:00] KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you so much for joining us AT THIS HOUR.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: LEGAL VIEW with Ashleigh Banfield starts now.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. And welcome to LEGAL VIEW.

A day before five more states help choose the nominees for president, the Republican frontrunner has two more words for his nearest rival. Donald Trump is tweeting that Ted Cruz, whom he long ago branded lyin' Ted, is also "weak" and "desperate." All because he's teaming up with John Kasich to try to stop Donald Trump from winning 1,237 delegates before that all-important July convention.

Donald Trump is asserting that Kasich, quote, "openly can't stand Cruz and is 1-38 in nominating contests to date." Regardless, the Texas senator and Ohio governor separately announcing almost simultaneously though last night that Ted Cruz will stand down in New Mexico and in Oregon, allowing John Kasich to effectively run alone as an anti-Trump candidate. And then also that Kasich's going to return the favor for Ted Cruz in Indiana. At a diner this morning in Philadelphia, John Kasich wasn't having Trump's claims of, quote, "collusion."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump says it's sad. He says it's collusion. He says it's desperation. He says it's more of the same for Washington. How do you respond to that attack?

GOV. JOHN KASICH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't respond to Donald Trump. I mean, what are you kidding me?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is this collusion?

KASICH: Is it - no. What does that even mean? I don't even know. Does he know what that means?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The two of you are teaming up to compete against Donald Trump.

KASICH: No, the two of us are competing for to win the nomination and to get - and to - and to make sure that we can steward our resources so we can stop Hillary Clinton. And what -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) -

KASICH: What I think - and I think - and I think what Donald Trump needs to understand is that he cannot beat Hillary Clinton.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It is big news that John Kasich has decided to pull out of Indiana, to give us a head to head contest with Donald Trump. That is good for the men and women of Indiana. It's good for the country to have a clear and direct choice. After discussions with the Kasich campaign, we made a decision about allocating resources. We decided to allocate our time and energy and resources on the state of Indiana. Governor Kasich decided to allocate his resources elsewhere. I think that makes sense from both campaigns.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Well, the Cruz/Kasich divide and conquer plan does not include the states that vote tomorrow. And they are Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, offering up a total of 172 GOP delegates. And on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are going to be divvying up 384 delegates. And my CNN colleague, Jason Carroll, is following every single one of those delegates. I'm kidding, he's following Hillary Clinton. Our Phil Mattingly is watching the Trump versus everybody else story, which right now is the loudest.

So, if I can, I want to start with you, Phil. The response from Donald Trump, other than the Twitter, to this new, well, shall we say, newfound friendship between Cruz and Kasich.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's as you expected, it's sharp, it's a lot of tweets, but it's also a calculated response. One that he and his team believe they can use to their advantage. It lines up with what they've been saying, Ashleigh, over the last couple of weeks related to the delegate system on the whole, that it's rigged, that party insiders are trying to steal this election from him. Now he can point to this relationship between John Kasich and Ted Cruz and call out collusion.

I think it's important to note, Ashleigh, that for John Kasich and Ted Cruz, this was a strategic decision really caused by some sort of desperation. It's a recognition not only in the wake of the New York primary where Donald Trump took 90 of 95 delegates, but also what's about to happen in these five states tomorrow night. Donald Trump is in a very good position here. Ted Cruz and John Kasich needed to do something. This is what their advisors decided to do and they believe this will go a long way into helping them peel off delegates in keeping Donald Trump from that magic 1,237 number.

BANFIELD: All right, we're watching those numbers. We're listening to the sounds behind you. I know you're going to continue reporting what's going on in that camp throughout the day, Phil. Jason, to you for a minute. Everybody keeps wondering, as Hillary racks up wins, or at least racks up a lot more delegates than Bernie Sanders, it doesn't sound like Bernie Sanders is quieting down, being more conciliatory or winding up any kind of campaign.

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, we can say this, he is not, and also his supporters are not. I mean you just look at what's happening on Twitter. The #bernieorbust. Look, they're in it for the long haul.

Bernie Sanders, though, admitting though he sees a narrow path going forward. At the end of the day, what we're seeing here is you've got a man who has the populist message, he's got the enthusiasm. You see the thousands upon thousands of people who come out to see him. So he's got that. He's got the money.

[12:05:07] But, again, does he have the path to the nomination? Not likely. But even having said that, Sanders still keeping up with the energy, keeping up the attacks against Hillary Clinton, saying she's using Wall Street money to fund her campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I do not have a super PAC. I do not represent Wall Street or the billionaire class. I don't want their money. Secretary Clinton has chosen to raise her money a different way. She has a number of super PACs. Last reporting period on (INAUDIBLE) listed $25 million in special interests, $15 million from Wall Street.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: Sanders was asked one day if he could eventually endorse Hillary Clinton. He said it would take a couple things. She would have to stand up to billionaire donors. She would also have to fight for health care for all Americans and for education, free education, or at least affordable education for young people.

Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: And, Jason, real quickly, before I let you go, people who like to watch the Internets over the weekend probably saw this new ad that came out from Hillary Rodham Clinton.

CARROLL: Yes.

BANFIELD: Not so much focused on Bernie Sanders but really focused on the latest news from Donald Trump. Can you explain what happened?

CARROLL: Right, and that shows you where her head is at, it shows you where the campaign is at. They're already looking ahead to the frontrunner, Donald Trump, and this new ad really takes a look at pointing out and keying in on some of those controversial statements he's made in the past.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: At the right time, I will be so presidential, you will be so bored.

ON SCREEN TEXT: He's hoping you'll forget about this.

TRUMP: They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.

ON SCREEN TEXT: And this: I'll use the word "anchor baby."

And this: This is a country where we speak English.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: That ad also points out some of the controversial statement that Trump had made about abortion, saying that women should be punished. He then corrected that statement, tried to backtrack on that. So you can see already that the Clinton camp already sort of putting out there what they're expected to do and how they expect to attack Donald Trump in a general election.

Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: All right, Jason Carroll, thank you for that. We'll check in with you throughout the day as well.

And now I want to bring in executive editor of CNN Politics, Mark Preston, for the 30,000 foot view of all of this. And making a great guest appearance on our political segment, our usual law guy, CNN's senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin as well, because there's law that comes into this.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, there is.

BANFIELD: I'm getting to that in a minute. But first to you. We've got tomorrow, Mark Preston, what's called the Acela primaries.

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Right.

BANFIELD: And if you've ever gone between Washington and Boston, you've probably hit an Acela track at some point. It's that train that hits all those states in between.

PRESTON: Right.

BANFIELD: And it just looks like a big old Trump sweep. So why is this big business of the collusion or the friendship or the alliance or whatever you want to call it even matter at this point?

PRESTON: Well, it matters because they are trying to do this last ditch effort right now, Cruz and Kasich, to be relevant and possibly have a shot at winning the nomination in Cleveland. The bottom line is, is we've seen Donald Trump do very well here in New York last week. He is expected to do very well in these five states tomorrow. In fact, I just heard that a very big named lobbyist out of Washington, D.C., is now volunteering on behalf of Donald Trump. A gentlemen by the name of David Urban. He actually worked for Arlen Specter. Did a lot of work for Rick Santorum. He's starting now to bring establishment types along. And the reason why you see this at this point is that after tomorrow night there are only ten more primary contests left. In order to stop Donald Trump to get to 1,237, you've got to stop him now.

BANFIELD: So the - look, voters don't like being told what to do. They didn't like it when Mitt Romney told them what to do. They said it loud in Florida and Ohio. Don't tell us where to vote so that you can strategize. We want to vote our conscience. We want to vote how we feel.

What makes us think that this is going to be any different? Especially given the fact that when good reporters like you and everybody else in the media calls these campaigns to get a little clarity on what this means, they're mum. They won't say a word. All of a sudden they put out a statement and expect everybody to fall in line.

PRESTON: Yes, you know, I think I was surprised by what we heard earlier from John Kasich, as well as from Ted Cruz. And the bottom line is, if they want to sell this plan, if they want to convince voters in Indiana and if they want to convince voters in these other states, Oregon, elsewhere in the remaining states, quite frankly, to support them, then they need to make the case that Donald Trump is bad for the Republican Party and is bad for the country. But other than that statement we saw last night, we saw hedging by John Kasich just an hour ago, we saw Ted Cruz hedging just about a half hour ago on what this actually means. And if you're going to do that, it means you're not all in and I'm a little confused by that strategy.

BANFIELD: And the afternoon -

PRESTON: Right.

BANFIELD: Before that newfound alliance came out, Ted Cruz is saying there's only one vital path and it doesn't include Kasich.

PRESTON: Right.

BANFIELD: Now to you, Jeffrey, with your legal mind and your political acumen. I'd like you to somehow come together with these three terms that Donald Trump has continuously thrown out about Ted Cruz and others. He's called Ted Cruz a fraud. He's accused Ted Cruz of bribery. And now he's accusing Ted Cruz and John Kasich of, quote, "collusion." They are very strident words when it comes to law, but does that apply to primary politics?

[12:10:14] TOOBIN: Collusion is a term that comes out of anti-trust law. And one thing we know about American politics, it has nothing to do with anti-trust law. These are epithets that are being used by Donald Trump. They are, frankly, pretty common in American politics, to call one another a fraud, you're colluding. This has nothing to do with law. None of this will ever go, nor should it go, to a courtroom. These are people who are arguing over who should get support. That's a perfectly legitimate thing for them to do. Name calling is as old as George Washington in American politics, but it is something that does not belong in courts and will never go there.

BANFIELD: So when there are all sorts of threats of litigation, just toss that out the window?

TOOBIN: No, it really does.

BANFIELD: Yes.

TOOBIN: I mean they're - they're - you know, in certain areas there is a possibility - you know, we haven't talked about it much lately, but someone might be able to file a lawsuit. And there have been lawsuits filed over whether Ted Cruz is eligible for the presidency because he was born in Canada. I think that issue has gone away, largely because Cruz's chances seem to be fading. But other than that, in terms of -

BANFIELD: You can buy a ticket for a delegate to go to the convention, or you can bring them to your golf course and it is fair game.

TOOBIN: Absolutely.

BANFIELD: I mean that's just the way the ball bounces in primaries.

PRESTON: Absolutely.

TOOBIN: Absolutely. And it's been done.

BANFIELD: Absolutely. It's been done. And that's primary politics, folks. It's run by the - the campaigns. It's not FEC. Guys, thank you. I appreciate all the clarity, if we can ever get any of that during this race. Thank you so much.

Donald Trump is expected to speak live at the top of the hour. That's 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Flags are set and mike is going. We're going to listen in to see if he steps up his attacks against both Cruz and Kasich, a double punch now since they're teaming up on him. Tomorrow, CNN is, of course, going to have coverage all day long of those critical five primaries, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.

Coming up next, breaking news about, of all things, the thing you thought went away, deflategate. Guess what? It's back. And it's blowing up all over again. Tom Brady not happy about what a court said today. Think this is already old new? No. It's coming up for next football season, folks. I'll explain.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:16:17] BANFIELD: We're following some breaking news from a federal appeals court because it's decided that football star Tom Brady is in fact going to have to serve that four-game suspension over that whole deflategate scandal. And this decision has come after a lower court had sided with Brady instead and knocked that whole suspension down. It is a little confusing. It's been going on for a while and that's why we have Sara Ganim, because she's very, very smart at these kinds of things, and then CNN legal analyst Paul Callan can tell us if there's another step in this whole brouhaha. Sara, start with the basics, because I think a lot of people are

wondering where we are in this process and how we ended up here.

SARA GANIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, let's go back to the beginning, right, because this all goes back to that AFC Championship game in 2015 where you could see the balls were a little squishy. There were some underinflated footballs used. And Patriots' head coach Bill Belichick said it all had to do with weather and science and it wasn't anything mischievous that was going on. But the NFL investigated and Roger Goodell decided that there would be a four-game suspension for Tom Brady, the quarterback of the Patriots. And he appealed, the players union appealed the decision and the league essentially lost. And -

BANFIELD: So he got to keep playing.

GANIM: He got to keep playing all through last season. Now that decision has been overturned by the United States Court of Appeals of the Second Circuit and they're saying that -

BANFIELD: So they're basically saying (INAUDIBLE) kicked down to the next (INAUDIBLE)?

GANIM: It's being kicked back. So when we come back in the fall for football season, there will be a four-game suspension for Tom Brady now. The interesting thing here is the NFL has not commented yet on this. We could see them waive this. They may decide that he doesn't have to serve it. They may decide that he - that he does. And that four-game suspension could start at the beginning of the 2016 season.

BANFIELD: OK, Paul Callan, this is the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. That sounds like the end of it. And effectively it wouldn't be maybe for other cases, but this one?

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I think it's the end. I mean there's only one court higher than the second circuit and that's the U.S. Supreme Court. And I kind of think the U.S. Supreme Court's not going to get involved in, you know, the inflation of a football in a Patriot's locker room. But you never know.

Also, the courts like to defer to these private arbitration proceedings because it gets cases out of the court system. It gets them resolved privately. And they very rarely, you know, set them aside unless something really egregious happened. You know, interestingly in the decision, the courts seemed to say, you know, there's a lot of evidence that he did know about the deflation that was going on of the footballs. So there was adequate ground for the commissioner to hand down this suspension.

BANFIELD: I - I tend to agree with you, only in that, look, it's exciting, people talk about it because it's football and we're passionate. And when it comes to the Supreme Court of the United States, it's a whole different set of ideals that they're after when they take a case. But this is also a case that could potentially involve hundreds of millions of dollars in all sorts of domino effects. So is there any nugget that you could see in the Tom Brady case that say an Elena Kagan might think, you know what, yes, let's settle this once and for all. And it is arbitration, so I'm not sure where this question's even leading.

CALLAN: You can never say never with the court system. Yes, the Supreme Court could look at it and say that there was some sort of a constitutional due process violation here that, you know, robbed people of the right to use the court system to resolve disputes. I don't think they'll do it because it would affect so many - probably hundreds of thousands of private arbitration agreements that go on in every industry in the United States. So I kind of think the Supreme Court will just leave it alone regardless of the sports fans sitting on the court.

BANFIELD: Hey, new wrinkle, crazy wrinkle, but I'm just going to throw it at Sara because you can't stump this one. Even though this is the NFL's punishment and they effectively come out winning today, there's some talk that they don't have to enforce even their own punishment here. So we may still not see this four game suspension. It's a weird question, but it's possible?

[12:20:15] GANIM: Totally the NFL's call, right: It was their - their suspension, their punishment to begin with. We've reached out to them to see if they're going to enforce it come the beginning of the season, 2016.

BANFIELD: There's politics. There's fans.

GANIM: Well, they say there is politics involved.

BANFIELD: Yes.

GANIM: There's sports politics involved here, right?

BANFIELD: They're important.

GANIM: Because there's been some questions over whether or not Roger Goodell should have, you know, given this punishment in the first place, whether or not his role - this should be his role. You know, there's also a lot of talk, as Paul mentioned, over this - I'm sure will reignite it, over whether or not Tom Brady knew. And so there's all of these unknowns. We'll see what they do.

BANFIELD: OK. Keep the journal going and you're still on the assignment. Thank you, Sara Ganim, appreciate it. Paul Callan, as always, brilliant, brilliant (ph).

CALLAN: Thank you.

BANFIELD: Coming up next, I'm going to switch gears to this intense manhunt that's going on in Ohio. You've probably heard this story. There are relatives of a family right now being warned that they could be the next target, that they should arm themselves after eight of their family members were found slaughtered, execution style, at four separate crime scenes. It is a bizarre mystery, but there are some clues. We'll tell you about them, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:45] BANFIELD: Some live pictures for you now on the campaign trail. Wilmington, Delaware, where that's a Hillary Clinton event, because you can see it says "working the Hill" in the background. And in Warwick, Rhode Island, that is a Donald Trump event. We're keeping a close eye on both of these events because The Donald expected to speak shortly and Hillary expected to speak shortly, all ahead of tomorrow's pivotal contest in five states. They're called the Acela states because that train zips right through and voters will do the same tomorrow. We're going to watch that throughout the hour and throughout the day.

We're also watching this big story in Ohio, an intense manhunt going on right now in Pike County. Police there are searching for the killer or the killers of eight members of one family. Each of them, shot in the head execution style as they slept. Their bodies were found at four separate crime scenes and what investigators are calling a series of, quote, "well planned execution-style killings." The victims ranged in age from 40 all the way down to just 16 years old. We're now hearing the frantic 9-1-1 call that was placed by one of the victim's sisters-in-law just moments after she made a horrendous discovery.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

911 DISPATCHER: Ma'am, ma'am, you've got to tell me what's going on.

CALLER: There's blood all over the house.

DISPATCHER: OK.

CALLER: My brother-in-law is in the bedroom and it looks like someone has beat the hell out of him.

DISPATCHER: OK.

CALLER: There's blood all over (INAUDIBLE) -

DISPATCHER: Ma'am, can you tell me what country that's in? Is it -

CALLER: Pike County.

DISPATCHER: It's Pike County?

CALLER: Yes, and they dragged them in the back room.

DISPATCHER: OK. OK. I need you to get out of the house. Did you drive over there?

CALLER: Yes, I did.

DISPATCHER: OK.

CALLER: Both of them in there look like they're dead.

DISPATCHER: You think they're both dead?

CALLER: I think they're both dead and it looks like someone has beat the crap out of them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: We're joined now by CNN's Nick Valencia.

Nick, it is just awful to hear that voice of that young woman and now we're also hearing the sheriff telling surviving family members, like her, that they should arm themselves if they feel like they might be targets as well.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's a little unsettling when you hear a local sheriff come out and tell the surviving victims family to arm themselves. This is a county that believes very strongly in the Second Amendment. A lot of people very concerned. And they are arming themselves.

Over the weekend, about 100 friends and family spent the days at a church, a local church here, to find answers, comfort, anything, really, to just put them at ease here. A lot of people very unsettled, the fact that there are still not suspect or suspects, no clear motive in all of this.

But this already tragic story took a very bizarre and interesting twist yesterday when the attorney general and the local sheriff announced that three major pot-growing operations were found at the residences of those victims. A source close to the investigation, Ashleigh, tells me that this - these marijuana plants that were found in the vicinity, they weren't for personal use. That they were for something much bigger than that, something much larger, though authorities would not make the direct connection to these execution style murders being related to drugs. Just by the nature, though, of how they happened, the ruthlessness of them, a mother sleeping next to her four-day old baby shot in the head while sleeping next to that baby, has fueled a lot of speculation in this community that these murders were tied to drugs.

Locals have come up to us, told us that there is a major drug problem in Piketon, in Pike County generally. There's a lot of methamphetamine, a lot of heroin. I spoke directly to the best friend of Dana Rhoden. She's one of the victims that was shot and killed on Friday. And I asked her directly, where the Rhodens involved in drugs? And she says, everyone has skeletons in their closet, but the Rhodens were overall very good people. Even still, though, many people here, well they believe that drugs were involved in the discovery of those grow operations over the weekend announced, you know, has a lot of people fueling that speculation.

Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: It is such a mystery. Nick Valencia, live in Pike County for us. Thank you.

And that's why I want to bring in CNN's senior law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes.

[12:29:52] Tom, you've just heard the report that Nick gave, the friends of one of the victims, the supposition, the evidence that they've collected. I think that the numbers - the number - pieces of evidence is just over a dozen, very little for this number of crime scenes and this kind of a grizzly act.