Judge Grills DOJ Attorney Over National Security Defense of Press Ban

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0:49No haggling. No hassle. No one called him boss. He's still on the couch. Astonishing. Sell your car today on Carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply. Tonight, Trump's White House press ban is in the hands of a judge. His ruling could come at any moment as he questions the DOJ's attempt to defend it. Plus, the midterm panic for Trump and Republicans, the new numbers it has the party fearing a November wipeout. And later, China's Xi Jinping meeting with the president of the United States as AI CEOs deliver a new urgent call for action. That's all tonight on Laura Coates Live.

1:36At any moment, a federal judge could rule on President Trump's White House media ban. And that judge said that he would make a decision as soon as he could after hearing today's arguments in court. The government tried to argue that this isn't about the First Amendment or discriminating against outlets based on their reporting. No, this was about something else, they say. is about fitting a square peg into a round hole. And in this case, the square peg, national security. The round hole, the legal precedent. The administration is trying to claim that national security gave it a reason to ban CNN and MSNOW and Politico.

2:15But the outlets say that explanation doesn't hold any water and it came so late as to be pretextual. And the ban violated their First Amendment and due process rights, they allege. The lawyer representing the outlet said that it seemed like a light bulb went off, that the administration decided to change their reasoning and started citing national security. You know, it tracks with the timeline. Think about it. Friday, Trump announces the ban. Now, nothing in his post mentions national security. That argument came later. In fact, it came three days later, on Monday, when the president publicly invoked national security in this post.

2:55And then yesterday, four days after the ban, the GOJ made national security part of its response to the lawsuit. It attached letters from the White House to each outlet citing stories the White House claims threatened national security. Now the phrase national security isn't exactly new territory for this administration or this president. He has used that phrase to justify all sorts of policies, all sorts of projects. We need Greenland for national security and even international security. Tariffs are national security. A tremendous amount of what's being done with respect to the boardroom is for national security.

3:38But in this case, you know, just saying national security doesn't actually answer the question, what exactly crossed the line? There's a difference between reporting on matters of national security and actually compromising national security. And one detail from today's hearing drives that point home. The outlet's lawyer noted that of the multiple CNN stories the administration cited, again, days after the ban, you know, only one was written by a journalist with a hard pass that gave White House access, and her pass was renewed months after that story was published. The lawyer called the stories Garden Variety Reporting and he said this about the Department of Justice.

4:24They are literally arguing that reporters shouldn't scrutinize national security. That's the sin. Now, whatever the government's justification is, the national security explanation came after, after the passes were already pulled. And that gets us to the round hole, the legal precedent. two cases from years past that say you've got to have due process. Reminder, that's notice and an opportunity to be heard. And they set the standard, those two cases, that there has to be a process if the White House tries to yank reporter access, a process that happens beforehand, not days later. That might mean advance notice, an opportunity to respond in advance, a reason for the decision to respond to.

5:17And while we wait for the ruling on the First Amendment and, of course, due process claims, when it comes to due process, the judge said this in court today. I think it is fair to say the process the circuit laid out in those two cases wasn't followed here. With me now, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Jamie Raskin, who's taught constitutional law for more than two decades. And he joins us now. Congressman, this is mind boggling to people who have even read or skimmed the First Amendment, let alone understand the idea of access not being restricted based on the content of speech or the coverage.

5:59But what did you think about the way that the DOJ raised arguments about national security, about access being a privilege and not a right, which, of course, there are limitations to accessing the White House. What was your assessment of their argument? Well, so the First Amendment covers any kind of government property, but in different ways. So if you're talking about the sidewalks and the streets and the parks, that's called a traditional public forum where you can't ban essentially any speaker for any reason other than they're committing violence or, you know, and so that's clear. Then there's something that's called a reserved or a limited public forum that's used for a particular purpose.

6:43But even if you can see that this is the most restrictive kind of public forum called a non-public forum, the one thing that is the cardinal sin there is called a viewpoint discrimination, where you say, well, these people can speak because I like what they're saying. These people cannot speak because they don't like what they're saying. And that's precisely what Trump did. He selected out the speakers, the media institutions he didn't like. He said, you're fake news. You're, you know, getting in my way and I'm going to just banish you from the White House. So that is a very straightforward case of what we call political viewpoint discrimination.

7:21Now, they scrambled after the fact to try to clean it up. By offering a national security. This is really about national security, that's just the last scoundrel of any free speech violator, or I'm sorry, that's the last refuge of any authoritarian scoundrel who's trying to violate the free speech rights of reporters he doesn't like, is to say, oh, this is a national security thing. Well, they give a lot of deference to that reason. It's does he think somehow that, and I mean more broadly, not necessarily this case, but the idea of national security being under the purview of the president of the United States.

7:57Is this sort of a remix of the same argument that he thinks has happened before? He's using national security for anything where he loses in court. He's using it for the ballroom. He's using it for the reflecting pool. He's using it for the Kennedy Center. He's using it for the arch. And he thinks that somehow there's a magic national security exception in the Constitution that allows him to override every other provision of the Constitution. There's clearly not a national security exception for the censorship of speech. We have the same First Amendment in peacetime as we do in wartime and so on.

8:29Now, you can't incite imminent lawless action, but that's hardly what CNN or MS or Politico were doing. What about his critique? And some people have asked this question about, well, you know, can't he have a valid interest in not having negative reporting, which I'm like, well, no, that's not a valid interest in having quote-unquote negative reporting. There's no guarantee you will like what you're being covered around as long as it's informative to the public. Look, he has a cell phone that a lot of people seem to call up. A lot of people seem to have his number. If he wants to block CNN or MS or Politico on his personal cell phone, he's got a right to do that like every other citizen.

9:10But what we're talking about is the use of government resources, government offices and government property to discriminate based on political viewpoint. And that doesn't mean that every media entity in the world gets to go to those press conferences. I mean, he could set some reasonable content neutral viewpoint neutral regulations based on the size of the media entity or the reach of the audience or something like that. But these are media entities that he's invited in. He's been perfectly happy to have them until he got mad about some stuff that they reported. That is classic viewpoint discrimination.

9:44There is the government arguing that, quote, they may control reporters' access to restricted presidential areas like the Oval Office. Given that the AP has been kept out of the Oval Office and, by the way, Air Force One for more than a year now while the lawsuit is pending, what is to stop the administration from using that same tactic here? Are there limitations? So, you know, again, I don't know that the Oval Office has ever been defined as, you know, either a traditional public forum or a limited public forum or a non-public forum. But that was also viewpoint discrimination. And you can't engage in viewpoint discrimination in any kind of government forum.

10:25The difference here, of course, is that the media wisely stood together and showed solidarity with each other and said, we're not going to participate in this and we're all going to object to it. I don't think that the media did the same thing when the Associated Press got kicked out for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. That, too, was a form of viewpoint discrimination. And if you think about what the viewpoint discrimination is in both cases, it's discrimination against media entities that insist on telling the truth. It is pro-truth media entities that are being punished by the president, the ones who are willing simply to publish whatever the president says uncritically and unquestioningly.

11:05Well, they're fine. That is essentially to reduce all private government media into state media like China. And it's interesting that all of this is taking place against the backdrop of the Chinese president coming over here and the president lavishing praise on the communist dictator of China. And one of their arguments was, at the very least, keep the ban in place until after this visit from the president of China, which is a very interesting idea of a timeline here. They want to show deference to a fellow authoritarian censor. I find that shocking for a lot of reasons. We should teach them a lesson instead.

11:37Well, one thing I'd like you to give me a lesson on for our audience is what are the potential hypotheticals that the judge is obviously going to be considering? And I think others will look at this as well. What could the president do and get away with and still be in line with the First Amendment? Could he, for example, say, you know what? I don't want any press at the White House any longer. No one gets access any longer. I can take whatever questions I want or not. Is that in line? Well, I don't think there's any constitutional compulsion for him to do press conferences. If he doesn't want to do press conferences, he can go without them.

12:11That's obviously not what his urge is. he loves doing press conferences and then berating and dressing down the reporters. But yeah, he could decide to do just a bunch of private interviews with the media people he wants to do. The question is, when you've constructed a forum out of government property and using government resources and government-funded employees to set it up, at that point, you can't do it in such a way as to violate the free speech and free press rights of the people who come in. We'll see what the court actually ends up saying about this. But I want to turn to another issue because it's been reported.

12:48And one of the things we'd like the press to do is to ask questions that are important for the audience and the voters and the American public and the world to understand. And there are some prominent Republicans, Senate Republicans, who are pushing for a probe into Donald Trump Jr. Why? Because there are reports that his wedding party was bankrolled by somebody who was a Russian oligarch. Why do you think this particular story is breaking through to Republicans in ways that others have not? Well, the American people are rightfully shocked by what we're seeing, that you've got a Russian oligarch who is a couple steps away from Vladimir Putin, who's been involved in all kinds of war crimes against Ukrainians, involved in mass kidnapping of Ukrainian children.

13:34All of these appalling forms of corruption and lawlessness. And that guy is just routinely funding the wedding festivities of the son of the president of the United States. And they act like it's no big deal. The amazing thing is that they didn't even realize that there would be this profound public revulsion at what they are doing. Because they are so deeply in the world of the autocrats and the plutocrats and the dictators from all over the world. That's who they hang out with. Vladimir Putin in Russia and Erdogan in Turkey and, you know, and the Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. These are the people they identify with.

14:17It's the opposite of America first. It's the autocrats first. And that's who Donald Trump and his family associate with. And they've made billions of dollars doing that. Americans understand now they don't have a program to offer America in terms of getting health care for everybody or rescuing the environment from climate change or what have you. Their program is self-enrichment. And they've made billions of dollars already from rivers of cash flowing in through all of the crypto corruption and the foreign government and monarchical emoluments that they're lining their pockets with. Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you so much.

14:52You bet. Thanks for having me live. Up next, 41 days to go until November. The elections, I mean. And the hits keep on coming for Trump and his party. We have new data that has Republicans starting to sweat, plus ICE operating in Kansas, and now one of the state's Republican senators is calling out the agency. The panel is live with me next on that and more.

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16:1941 days to go before the midterms and warning signs keep flashing for Republicans. The latest alarming number for the GOP, CNN's newest poll numbers show the president's job approval stands at just 33 percent. And the economy, which used to be one of Trump's strongest issues, well, that's now one of his weakest. I mean, across the board, voters give Trump low marks on tariffs, on helping the middle class, inflation. Well, now some Republican candidates are taking notice and putting some daylight between themselves and Trump, especially when it comes to the economy and the Iran war. The war with Iran needs to end and end quickly.

16:58When it does, energy costs will plummet. But Michigan families can't afford to wait for that to happen. The president has final say in regards to this. But I just believe that we should be exiting Iran, that it's time to move on. Let's talk more about it with the co-host of the Party Lines podcast, Kurt Bardella, the publisher of the Watchdog Report on Substack, and Republican strategist Aaron McGuire. Also with me, Scott McFarland, Chief Washington Correspondent for Midas Touch Network. Glad to have all of you here. And your podcast is hilarious. I'm glad you guys are here. It's informative as well.

17:33I feel like to have a good time. But let's talk about this. I didn't want to say it, but let's talk about for a second. Okay. How about the drama that is these poll numbers? And I used to be a Republican. Yeah. Are you surprised other Republicans or more Republicans are not looking at these numbers 41 days before the midterms and saying more daylight, longer poll. Yeah, I think I'm more surprised that this, what we're seeing now, didn't happen 30, 40, 50, 60 days ago when it might have mattered and could have helped their situation politically. Now it's too late. And it looks so brazenly political, so brazenly full of self-interest.

18:09It's not genuine or authentic. So it's not going to score them any points with voters coming up with this act at the 11th hour of, oh, Donald Trump, never heard of him. I don't know what you're talking about. Don't tie him to me. It's not going to work when you spent the bulk of the last four years lockstep with every single thing he's done. And now at that 11th hour, when your numbers are upset on, you're going to decide to all of a sudden say, I don't like what he's doing. Voters aren't going to fall for it. They're not that stupid. I wonder if Democrat voters, though, are looking at this and saying, OK, well, I don't like either of you then.

18:38I don't trust what Republicans are saying or Democrats. I'm not convinced that they can actually turn around. Is there a risk that Democrats might look at this and say the poll numbers are horrible, That must mean they'll vote for us. Listen, complacency could lose elections for anybody. And so if Democrats believe, hey, we don't need to show up, that's an enthusiasm problem for them, that they'd have to scale going into the midterms. And it's clear, Democrats don't have much better approval ratings than Republicans when it comes to support within their party. So I think overall, Democrats have been able to maintain the enthusiasm more across the board.

19:10And they've turned into a higher propensity voter. Republicans became that lower propensity voter where, in terms of, I don't want to take the Democrats' term, big tent party where we brought all the people in who were newer to voting in the 24 cycle. Those were voters we needed to maintain going into this cycle. It doesn't look like we have been able to do so. But the cash advantage that Republicans have is a significant one. And it is one that I think is being underestimated a bit in this election. Money can't buy a class and it can't buy you an election, but it can certainly gain ground in these closing days.

19:42I think that money came in too late, though. That's a thing. The Republicans gave Democrats an open runway, like in Texas. Tell her who had the airways all to himself for a better part of a month. That's true. Like you're going to come in now at the last second with this big influx. They could they should have done it. I talked about it. I said that Maine, when they were going through their issues with Graham Plattner and they were sitting there empty, Susan Collins, this team should have been up on air just doing pro Susan ads at that point because it was empty space. Let me ask you, because the Wall Street Journal is reporting there are mentions of Trump on conservative podcasts, they've fallen nearly 70 percent from their peak, which is in 2024.

20:18These voices are normally young and male, a category that both different parties want to have. What happens if those decline in numbers and mentions translate to declines in votes for Trump or Republicans more broadly? Well, the subtle delta that some Republicans are trying to draw between themselves and Trump is just that. It's very subtle. You saw the Mike Rogers video. You saw Tom Tiffany. They weren't calling Trump out by name. They're just saying the war should end soon. We saw Roger Marshall, the Kansas senator who's in a tough re-election fight, distance himself with Trump on immigration issues.

20:55But he didn't name check Trump. This is not a moment for subtlety if you're trying to draw a divide between you and an embattled president. If conservative podcasters are defecting, well, that's an indication of where the base might be. But these statewide candidates, especially in the Midwest, who need to win independent votes, need to win Democratic votes, if they're going to do that with a 33 percent approval rating for Trump, they have to be less subtle. On that point, I mean, a prominent conservative radio host said about the war in Iran, and I'm quoting that pollster, saying he says the pollster told him, quote, if you were in a plus 15 district, you're within the margin for era.

21:31If you're in a plus 10 district, you're underwater. And that this might end up being an end up being an even worse midterm environment than 2006. And he wants Trump to campaign more. Will that work? If you're a Democrat, you're saying, yes, please put Donald Trump on every stage in every battleground district next to every candidate that's on the frontline map. That will help Democrats at this point, because, again, it's a historically unpopular president at this point in the midterms. It does remind me of 06. That's the first election I worked. That's what brought me to Washington. And we had a race where we were offered the White House, the president to come campaign for us.

22:05The president was so unpopular at the time. We actually said, no, please don't do that. That's going to hurt more than it's going to help. And they couldn't believe it. They were they were perplexed that we would actually say that to the White House. But it was a San Diego Republican border district where immigration was a number one issue. And we were like, please don't send George W. Bush to our district. Now we're 20 years later, excuse me, and a request for him to campaign more with the popularity rating being so low. Was that the right move for Republicans? It depends on what your district is and where you're running.

22:33Each race is different, and they need to be treated as such. And I also think it's important, even if you look back 20 years to 2006, we're looking at a very different map, a very different time, a very closely divided but polarized electorate in this country. So we're not going to be looking at what could have been 60, 70 seats that you might have seen in those previous cycles where those big swings would happen. These are small margins now because structurally we're looking at a very different dynamic in the country. even if you put redistricting aside. So when you look at what's happening in this country, whoever wins the House, and I still right now am going to put good money on the Democrats for that, in that case, it is going to be a very small margin.

23:10And if you are Hakeem Jeffries right now, you've got to worry more about what it looks like for you over the next 40 days trying to keep that coalition together when you've already seen fractures and frisiers if you think you're going to be Speaker in November. Here's a coalition that has been brewing, and that's with news organizations, Fox News, standing with CNN, MSNOW, and also Politico in the battle over press access at the White House, and it isn't part of the traveling pool. But Trump advisor Peter Navarro told advocate for a ban against, or wants a, excuse me, wants a ban against Fox, excuse me.

23:42And he says that he thinks that they should have no cabinet secretaries appearing as a kind of punishment. What does that suggest to you in terms of their positioning? And what happens to them being the most accessible administration ever if they do that? Well, they sure have figured out a way to marry up Fox and MS Now in the same little... The season of strange bedfellows. It really is. This is the thing. What unifies media is much larger than what divides media. They are there to have a chance to ask questions of newsmakers. It's a fundamental thing. Everybody wants a piece of that. They all see the long game here.

24:21tables turn in politics and in government. If we start banning people for viewpoints, we're going to ban the next set of people for viewpoints. Everybody's up on the joke here. I'm going to be surprised if Trump fights the court ruling tooth and nail because the court is sitting there with a chance to knock down this media ban. The media ban is starving him of his oxygen, which is media attention. I'm not sure how much he wants this ban to persist himself. Especially this week in particular. Thank you so much. Coming up to an election where you think you'd want as much oxygen in airtime. especially for Republicans on places like Fox, it is politically malpractice to say, don't go on TV right now.

24:58Let's not get the message out to anyone or anywhere. Look at Kurt and I, Democrat, Republican, and we agree. How about that? My God, my eyes just crossed. Thank you so much, everyone. Fill ahead for us. Trump rolls out the literal red carpet for China's Xi Jinping. As a Republican senator suggests, Trump is making a major mistake. Plus, Trump threatened to annihilate Iran at the United Nations, and now Iran's president has a message for this president next.

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26:06Now, this marks Xi's first visit to the nation's capital since 2015 when he met then-President Barack Obama. A lot has changed since then. Some Democrats argue the balance has shifted in China's favor. This is actually pretty consistent for Trump. He loves dictators and he loves the power that Xi Jinping represents. And I think this is the president really saying to the leader of China, don't hurt me. Let's bring in our experts to break down what's really at stake and on the table. CNN political and national security analyst David Sanger, and former director for China at the White House National Security Council under the Biden administration, Henrietta Levin.

26:49Glad to have both of you here. Let's talk, David, first about beyond the red carpet and the high-stakes optics at the White House. What are the real expectations for this summit? I think the expectations are pretty low at this point, Laura. I think you're going to see a continuation of what we saw in May when the president went to Beijing, which was also one that was sort of long on optics and short on real agreements. On the flight back from Beijing on Air Force One, the president was asked about aid to Taiwan and arms package he's held up. He said, well, I'll talk to the Taiwanese, which, of course, the president does not do.

27:31That's part of the sort of no-go area. And they'll make a decision. He has made no decision. And my guess is that what Xi wants to do at this point is bottle that up as long as they can. A lot of talk about AI and whether or not there could be some agreement that is sort of the beginnings of arms control. I think the Chinese view this very much as a way to try to contain their own ability to keep up with or leap ahead of the United States. I don't think they have much of an interest in it. And the president himself has said he believes that the safety concerns are a hoax. So if he believes that, he's not likely to agree to some international constraints.

28:15Well, talk to me, Henrietta, about that, because, you know, you've got Sam Altman, Dari Amadei delivering a message to Security Council today about this very topic of AI. Listen. We need accurate and speedy incident reporting, classification and reporting protocols, so the world can learn from failures before they become catastrophes. I believe that this is the most important global security issue facing the world today. For all the differences of the people in this room, we must put aside those differences in order to confront this global opportunity and global threat that is being presented to us at the same time.

28:55Now you combine that, Henrietta, with Senate Democrats who are calling on the president to reach some agreement, maybe behind closed doors about either slowing or pausing AI development. You've got what they're saying in terms of regulation. And then you've got, to your point, David, the White House not buying that this is even an issue and thinking it's all hyperbolic. So who fills in this vacuum to try to keep AI in check in a conversation with China? Is that even a fool's errand? Oh, well, right now it's Secretary Besant talking to his Chinese counterpart about AI. And so they had an announcement that they have agreed to establish a hotline to address worst-case risk scenarios when it comes to AI.

29:40And that's great, except that apparently the hotline is just Besant calling over to China and hoping someone answers. So, you know, we're not really seeing the kind of progress that's needed to deal with a threat of this scale. One other thing I was surprised to from Secretary Basin. He said that he wants to develop a common vision with China on the goals of AI. I do not want a common vision with China on the goals of AI because China wants AI that will keep the Communist Party of China in power. That is their number one goal. That is the safety risk they're concerned about. It's their own safety in power.

30:18And so we should be developing the rules for the future of AI with our democratic allies around the world who share our values and making China fit into that world rather than starting with an adversary in developing the framework for what's going to be one of the most important technologies of the next century. So how will President Trump capitalize on this opportunity given those concerns? I'm not sure he is going to capitalize on this because there is no regulatory framework that the president has embraced for at home. So if you don't have one here, it's really hard to have a basis for a discussion elsewhere.

30:59Henrietta is right. You've got to start with the core of democracies, right? Europe and the U.S. don't see eye to eye on this, but Europe does not have any of the frontier AI companies either. You didn't see many European executives up there in front of the UN today. But you've got to start this with the allies and with some common understanding of what it is we're trying to get done. And you have to also recognize this isn't like nuclear arms control. You know, in the nuclear age, it was only states that had the weapons, mostly the United States and the Soviet Union. You could count them. You understood what verification looked like.

31:43There are some lessons from that age, and you've heard both Anthropic and OpenAI discuss some of these, including having inspectors basically come in and live in the labs and raise an issue. That's sort of drawn from the International Atomic Energy Agency role. Right. But that doesn't mean you're going to be able to do nuclear-style arms control or have a hotline, because who are you going to call? Well, not best. And David Sanger, Henrietta Levin, excuse me, thank you so much for joining tonight. And still ahead, Elizabeth Holmes reportedly set to leave prison early as she appears in a new and gripping documentary that's raising all sorts of questions.

32:25Plus, a former American Idol contestant on trial for the murder of his wife, facing some tough testimony from his alleged mistress. How often do you make statements about wanting Ashley to die? That's probably at least once a month.

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33:49You know, every case has that moment when a witness could take the stand and make or break the case. Well, today may have brought that moment in the murder trial of a former American now a contestant who's accused of killing his wife in Ohio. Caleb Flynn is accused of killing his wife, Ashley, and then staging the murder scene to look like a burglary. Prosecutors say that he did it to be with his mistress. And today, that mistress, Aaliyah Botner, spoke about their years-long relationship. She says she gave him an ultimatum, leave your wife or end the affair. And she read in court some of his messages where Flynn wished his wife would die.

34:32Caleb said on the same day, I'm sorry what she does to both of us, but mostly you. I hate her as well, and I want her gone. Caleb said on March 21st, 2025, I miss you already, and I hate her with all that is in me. He said, yep, crying. 19 ,700. I said, what can I do? 19 ,701. And he said, kill her. Now, those are some of the 100 ,000 messages that prosecutors say Botner and Flynn exchanged. And when Aaliyah Botner heard about Ashley Flynn's death, on the very same day Botner says Caleb planned to divorce his wife, Ashley, Botner says she was shocked.

35:19My heart started pounding and, you know, in my mind, it just seemed like too much of a coincidence that the day he's divorcing her, she's just dead all of a sudden. Now, Flynn has denied any involvement in the death of his wife. I want to bring in former federal prosecutor and the president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, Nima Rahmani. Nima, good to see you. we keep meeting like this on cases like this. And Botner's testimony was incredibly damning, especially reading all the times that Caleb texted her that he wanted his wife dead. So how does the defense respond to that convincingly? Laura, you're right.

36:04Unfortunately, we always meet and talk when something bad has happened. And today was very bad for the defense. They're going to have a difficult time overcoming this. And you touched upon it. 100 ,000 messages between the two, 300 a day, and the substance of those messages. Flynn saying that he wanted his wife, Ashley, dead and wished there was some way it could happen without him going to jail. And just the cringeworthy nature of their discussions of Ashley Flynn. They called her spawn of Satan, a douche. And I think really the timing is the most damaging thing for the defense. The fact that the night before Ashley Finn is murdered, Caleb sends Botner a text message saying tomorrow is the day I'm going to be a free man.

36:51She, of course, interpreted that to mean that he was finally divorcing his wife. But lo and behold, she shot three times in her own home. I think it's going to be very hard, but tomorrow is going to be key. That's when the defense begins its cross cross examination of Botner. And whether the defense was able to get an FBI special agent to reveal that Botner had a contentious relationship with Ashley Flynn and that Ashley suspected the two of having an affair. I wonder how much that's going to come into all of this. But Nima, Botner got some credibility issues of her own. I mean, she admitted that she lied to the FBI when they first interviewed her.

37:25Listen. Why did you lie to the FBI during that first interview? I was selfishly afraid that my reputation was going to be ruined and that I was going to lose my job. And now that there was a murder attached, I didn't want to be attached to that in any way. So I was unfortunately just trying to save myself from my reputation being ruined and from losing my job. What caused you to tell more of the truth that night? They told me they found text messages on Ashley's phone. text messages between you. Her and friend. So do you think that her credibility issues now that she said that she initially lied, whatever reason she gave, is that going to undermine and overture the rest of her testimony?

38:14Potentially, yes. The defense is going to have to go after her very aggressively tomorrow, argue that she's a jilted ex who has a reason to lie, because really what came out today, I couldn't believe the defense didn't object. They allowed her to testify that she believed, Botner believed that Caleb Flynn murdered his wife, Ashley. I mean, that's completely objectionable, but you touched upon it. Here's how I expect the cross-examination to go. The lies to the FBI, the fact that she used chat, he sent it to Caleb and advised him how to delete messages. Speaking of deleting messages, she had two electronic devices, a laptop that was lost on an airplane, and a phone that fell into the ocean while she was kayaking.

38:56So the defense is going to say that this is someone that has every reason to lie. She's already lied to law enforcement and she's lying on the stand. This is the prosecution's star witness. So they're not going to hold back, pull any punches tomorrow. Expect to see fireworks in that courtroom, Laura. I mean, the prosecutors, they continue to accuse Flynn of staging the home to look like a burglary. And today they literally brought the garage door and frame from his home to illustrate the point. and detectives who testified that the damage that was on it did not show any evidence of any forced entry.

39:28That's quite a demonstrative, I mean, a garage door. Yeah, we've seen it all. Usually you go to the scene of the murders. In this particular case, they brought the scene into the courtroom. And this is one of the prosecution's big theories of the case, that the entry into the home only could have happened with someone who had access to the inside. So the murder weapon was the firearm that was in Caleb Flynn's vehicle. And we heard his mistress today testify that she actually saw that murder weapon. Now, of course, the defense is arguing that the intruder broke into the home, broke into the car, got the firearm and used it to kill Ashley Flynn.

40:05The prosecution is arguing, no, this was an inside job and completely staged. And I think that garage door testimony and the refrigerator that was blocking that door is going to be very important. The prosecution talked about that a lot in the beginning of its case and its opening. Well, keep following it. Nima Ramani, thank you. So where did things get lost? Like, how are you where you are right now? I wish I knew. I don't know. Elizabeth Holmes getting her close-up after a secret production before she got locked up. This incredible trailer has everyone talking, and you're going to see why next.

40:52Does any part of you worry about me being here 24-7? I don't think so. But what if I see something that makes you look bad? I think this is the moment in time to capture this story before I'm gone. A new stunning look at Elizabeth Holmes 34 days before she reported to prison for defrauding investors while running her failed blood testing startup Theranos. And tonight, ABC News reports her next chapter may already be taking shape. The DOJ has greenlit a plan to move Holmes to a halfway house in August of 2027. Her more than 11-year prison sentence has already been reduced by a year. Well, my next guest knows this story inside and out.

41:38He covered her federal fraud trial. CNN contributor Jacob Ward joins me now. All right, Jacob. I mean, she insists in this new documentary that she did nothing wrong. Are we actually seeing the real Holmes here? I mean, that seems to be the theme. There was a tremendous portrait of her done by the New York Times back in 2023. And, you know, at that time, too, that reporter came away utterly flummoxed by who she was. Is she a real person or was she constructing this other thing? I will say she, by her own account, says that who she was as the founder of Theranos, 19-year-old Stanford dropout, suddenly wearing the turtlenecks of Steve Jobs and speaking in this very low voice, which she no longer speaks in.

42:22She says that that was an act in order to project a certain kind of business acumen to be taken seriously in a man's world. So is this a new act? Is this what she is and who she is? We don't know, right? The motivations here are so complex. I am so interested by the access that this movie seems to have gotten and so impressed by Nathan Fielder getting that close to somebody. So I'll be very curious to see what people think. Well, there's a moment when it's a very buzzworthy one in which she talks about vulnerability. Listen. I mean, it took me a really long time to be okay with letting someone see me cry.

43:12And almost right on cue, by the way, she sheds like a single tear. Read that moment for me based on what you know. I mean, I will just say that to understand someone like this, I think it's important to understand the culture of Silicon Valley. That is a very constructed set of people. You have very outcome-oriented professionals raised intellectually from the moment. Certainly, they enter college, sometimes beforehand, to be a certain kind of highly effective person. to the point where today you can buy the services of these firms that will try to turn a dollars and cents entrepreneur into a character because they do so much better in their lives and they get so much attention.

43:57And Elon Musk gets by without a PR department or without any kind of marketing, surely through the force of his, sort of the colorfulness of himself. And so someone like Holmes, I think being perhaps sort of adrift as to who she really is makes perfect sense to me, considering she comes from this culture in which there is a literal industry built around constructing a persona for who you are and a world in which you are so deeply judged, not on the content of your character, but on how much money you make. You know, she stood out for a number of reasons, not the least of which being somebody who was a woman founder.

44:33Yeah. What is the legacy of what has happened to her? How has that impact others who come after her? Well, I mean, let's consider for a second the numbers. Last year, 1.1 % of all venture capital money went to all-female teams. 1.1%. There are no all-female teams in the list of unicorns, the billion-dollar companies that are out there right now. And yet women, when you give them a company and they run it, the studies show they make 78 cents on a dollar of investment, whereas male-funded companies on average make a 31 cent return on a dollar investment. They run more efficient companies and they get a tiny fraction of the numbers.

45:15So do I think that's a reason to lie to investors? No. Is there an enormous world in Silicon Valley of people outrunning the truth of what they've made? Elon Musk has done it for years. But our federal securities laws, as you know, they punish you for lying about what you can do now, not for falsely promising what you're going to produce in the future. I'm curious if they've learned anything from her. Jacob Ward, thank you for coming. Appreciate you being here. Thank you. Remember, you can stream my show live or watch on demand anytime with an all-access subscription. Scan the QR code on your screen or go to CNN.com slash watch to learn more.

45:51Thanks for watching. Here comes Alex Michelson with The Story Is.

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