third gop presidential debate. new air strikes in the syria, u.s. officials calling it a move in self-defense against iran. but also raising questions are u.s. deterrent efforts working? this. lights, camera, action, a deal to end the months long actor strike. so when will your favorite shows be back on the air? this i m john berman with sara sidner and kate bolduan. this is cnn news central. tick tick tick, the clock ticking for republican presidential hopefuls to make an impact in a race dominated by the front runner former president donald trump. five candidates took the debate stage last night and things got really nasty. they clashed over everything from abortion to foreign policy. trump, though, wasn t there. instead he held his own rally trying to get eyeballs a few miles away. but that didn t stop his republican rivals from finally going after him. i ll say this about donald trump. anybody who s going to be spending the next year and a half of their life foc
absolutely not. 9/11 commission. absolutely not. i think people look at those comments, they look at what you said in the atlantic, which you say you were misquoted, they look at comments you ve made about the federal reserve adding zeros to media companies bank accounts, it looks like you re floating conspiracy theories with this defense of, i m just asking questions. well, when you actually quote me, those are my words, and i stand by them. so, somebody else quoting me putting words in my mouth, i have a problem with. those words i stand by. you want to know why? we literally know the fbi, the 9/11 commission, the u.s. government on down told us specifically that saudi arabia had no involvement. 20-plus years later, quietly declassifying documents. it was a saudi intelligence agent that received two of those agents that crashed planes. the question is is 9/11 an inside job and you didn t say no. kaitlan, kaitlan, you know
i think it s very carefully crafted and just to go to the point that you were just raising, in terms of this question of defense of, quote, unquote, free speech, one has to only look at the statute in the elements for approving a conspiracy to defraud the united states. the elements are simple. there has to be a scheme to commit something unlawful. there has to be criminal intent. and there has to be over act over to act in furtherance of the skin. so a bunch of people sitting around in a basement, state house, plotting to submit a false electoral slate, that s not a crime. doing anything in furtherance of it, and there s paragraph after paragraph, of the overt acts done in furtherance, is what takes us from something which could lie in the realm of first amendment speech to the realm of criminal conspiracy
slates scheme. it s all readily understandable. i think it s very carefully crafted and just to go to the point that you were just raising, in terms of this question of defense of, quote, unquote, free speech, one has to only look at the statute in the elements for approving a conspiracy to defraud the united states. the elements are simple. there has to be a scheme to commit something unlawful. there has to be criminal intent. and there has to be over act over to act in furtherance of the skin. so a bunch of people sitting around in a basement, state house, plotting to submit a
but i know the law in this area. i ve taught it for 50 years. there s no defense here. they re simply playing for time. they want the american people to say we don t care if these people were going to overthrow the election. judge carter, david carter, a distinguished federal judge in california, in march of 2022, said that if the plot that john eastman and donald trump were hatching together had succeeded, we would have ended our democracy, we would no longer have a peaceful transition of power to the official winner of an election. that is serious. i don t think lawyers should play games about things like this. well, i want to play a little bit more of what trump s attorney said today, about his defense. because trump, who has been indicted, obviously, is making his defense of, well, it was eastman who told me what to do. let me play part of what he said. you had one of the leading