tv ABC7 News Getting Answers ABC March 30, 2023 3:00pm-3:30pm PDT
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concerned about, so they're trying to do all the talking in court at president. there have been so many questions here are thanks to you so many questions about whether there would be any sort of not official coordination, but any coordination between these investigations. there had been some talk as we heard from john santa. duty earlier that a decision to in fact in fact, vos grand jury might be delayed until after perhaps the easter holiday that this would be weeks from now. instead word coming late this afternoon at the grand jury did vote this afternoon, they voted to indict the former president again. the history made as we now approach six o'clock here in the east, involving a former president, the first time a former president has been criminally charged in this country. and john santucci. i want to bring it back to you because you've learned that the secret service has now been in touch with members of trump's team. trump's team has made proactive calls to secret service, david trying to figure out what exactly this would look like, and it's twofold. right it's the security
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around mara lago. it is an island. it is a complex. there is a only one bridge to get there. so that is concerned number one, and then it's obviously the concern of getting him up to new york. look as aaron was talking about earlier bike racks. they are the new things surrounding the da's office in lower manhattan. i can tell you from just walking around trump tower in midtown earlier this week, the racks are back. the cinder blocks are there. it looks as though it was the days when donald trump frankly, had a different address at 1600, pennsylvania avenue, but for the moment, we don't know when this trip would be to new york we had heard weeks ago that it would be a process it would be several days we wouldn't expect to see donald trump in new york. the day after word of an indictment. obviously we are checking that we're not sure, but it's going to be a process to physically bring him here. and what does that look like? as far as the courtroom and you have to remember to
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david, though it would be donald trump's arraignment. there's other business in criminal court . there are other criminals, frankly, in criminal court, so actually sealing off the building for the former president's protection. as he has a secret service protectee is going to be a high priority. ball from the secret service and nypd and. us here, erin khutor ski. i want to go back to you down in lower manhattan and aaron to get to john's point earlier about what this could look like. what are your sources inside the da's office, telling you about potentially what americans would see unfold here when the former president is brought to manhattan. when that happens, david, the manhattan district attorney's office and former president, trump's legal team will have choreographed the whole thing and those conversations will be ongoing. no arraignment date has yet been set, according to a court official. i just spoke with and he says that's going to be up to
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them to the da's office and to the former president's attorneys to negotiate once he is here, whether there's a camera in court, but it's up to the judge in new york state court, and that can be that can be a game time decision. but everything that happens will will undoubtedly be highly choreographed. we don't yet know what the charges are. those will not be unsealed until trump appears here at court, but we know the grand jury had been examining evidence of trump's alleged role in falsifying business records of his company . when as michael cohen, his former fixer, has said he accountant for the payment to stormy daniels as a routine legal expense, and prosecutors have been examining in the grand jury has been examining whether the true intent was was not a routine legal expense. but to protect his campaign chances. stormy daniels alleged that she had an affair with donald trump back in 2010, which he has long denied. but she wasn't paid until the closing weeks of the
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2016 presidential campaign, and cohen has suggested that trump was thinking about his election chances and nothing else. trump has said that he was trying to protect his family from an extortion, so this is by no means an open and shut case, david, but the very first step will be to get trump here for his arraignment, and no date has yet been set. very clear that it is not an open and shut case. in fact, it could very well be a difficult case to prosecute erin as you know, and to prosecute this on the state level and to potentially try to connect this to federal election law would be again something that's been untested so far. it's never happened before to see whether a top charge of falsifying business records ordinarily a misdemeanor could be elevated to a felony based on a federal crime. that could be the legal theory. there could be other legal theories that the manhattan district attorney's office is working with. they
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have not said, and they're not commenting tonight, david can nowadays with us and abc news contributor as well legal contributor once worked in the da's office, or thanks to aaron there, erin. thank you. we'll see you on world news tonight. a short time from now, in the meantime, can what can you tell us about the risk the d a takes in pushing forward with this case, getting the indictment that he had hoped to get obviously we don't know what the charges are inside that indictment. we knew that this had sat in the d. a s office for many years ramped up. obviously in these recent months as we've all reported on and now the indictment, but the real test comes and actually prosecuting this. and you're absolutely right, david, that this is a tough case for alvin bragg and the d. a s office for the reasons that other people have said this is an novelvery novel theory of criminal liability because you're tying this state crime of falsifying business records with election fraud, essentially and something to note is the southern district of
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new york. my former office looked at this case and looked at the hush money payments. case and took a pass on it. and alvin bragg used to be a prosecutor at the southern district of new york. i worked with him and now they have taken a second look. and they thought that's good enough to bring so it's something. ask yourself it's going to be difficult, just by the mere fact that someone else had looked at this and decided maybe not to go forward. can nowadays thank you so much can again we can't underscore here. the challenge that lies ahead really on both sides of this case, particularly for the prosecutor in uncharted territory can thank you. i do want to bring in our other contributors as well recline our political director here and rick the question a lot of people at home are going to ask. and obviously this is something we have never seen before. so we're watching it play out in real time. but there is nothing that says a former president or a candidate for that matter has been criminally charged. can't continue to plow forward with the race for president. there's
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100% correct, david. in fact, someone should presumably even campaign from a jail cell if he or she is imprisoned, and certainly in an active investigation in in the middle of a trial, none of that would disqualify donald trump from running for office so he could pursue that, as he says he would, and there's a conventional wisdom that's been developing in republican circles that this indictment might help him politically because it feels like he's being targeted all over again. but i'll tell you in talking to campaigns and campaigns in waiting on the republican side. there's a lot of questioning. around that notion. a lot of people on the republican side who will say yes , this prosecution may be politically motivated, but may also begin to make the case that all the weariness around donald trump enough is enough and that just this, adding to the sense and the whiff of scandal around him. this comes at a very interesting point in the developing 2024 race, a lot of candidates still on the sidelines, including major challenges like governor ron de santis, but people like the santis have said. look i'm not going to talk about this, and i do think it may be politically
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motivated. but i want people to recognize that all of this is about hush money to porn stars just a little reminder of what's at the root of this and what could be a political liability down the road as this campaign develops, alright, recliner political director rick thank you. perhaps one of the first reactions from the former president himself is just into abc news. john santucci, what has the former president told you, david? i just hung up with the former president. he tells me that he just learned of the news that it's an attack on our country, said its political persecution. he went on to see david. they are trying to impact an election. i asked the former president does he plan to turn himself in? david he said. you take care, john, and then he hung up on me. so i think we're going to have to wait and see. but obviously all of our reporting has been at the former president does indeed intend to head to new york maybe didn't want to give me that piece of information just yet from him, but something that we know his team has been an active conversations right now, with the secret service of what that is going to look like john
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santucci, our thanks for your reporting again, the former president donald trump, telling john just moments ago they are trying to impact an election. as the former president now runs for the white house again unclear again when he will come to surrender to the charges here in new york city, a manhattan grand jury voting to indict the former president just a short time ago, breaking the news right here. he will be criminally charged. of course, the first time we have seen this play out in our country before. our coverage will continue on abc news live. of course, the entire team as you have seen right here, working hard to report this out. we'll have team coverage on world news tonight. just about 21 minutes from now. in the meantime, we turn to your local news and i'll see you shortly. until then. good day. this has been a special julian: thanks so much for being
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here for "getting answers" on abc7. i am julian glover. we have been listening into indicted by a grand jury in new york city, all in relation to the hush money payment allegedly made to the porn star, stormy daniels, ahead of the 2016 election. we have been listening to the entire report with abc7 news. we have lori hastings joining us now to talk about all of this. we also want to note that of course we have david muir and world news coming up at 3:30 p.m. to break this down for our audience here. thank you so much for joining us right now. we appreciate your time. i will first let you tee it up with your thoughts on what we all witnessed. this was a day that we thought might come as early as last week. we were holding our breath and here we are today, finally the indictment of a former president, your thoughts?
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>> thank you. the first thing i want to say is my name is rory little and i teach at uc law san francisco which used to be uc hastings. this was a historic moment. many thought the president should have been indicted long ago and many thought he should never be indicted and this is all the political show. the political implications are going to be fascinating to watch. legally, it is a very serious moment when you have indicted a former president of the united states. it's never happened before in our history. all we know is that he's been indicted by a state grand jury, in other words this is not a federal case, there are federal investigations still going on. this is a new york state case. so it's not a federal tax case or a federal anything else. it is under some kind of state law that has to do with the accuracy and truthfulness of business records and certain filings under state law.
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and we have not seen it yet. so we will see it all assume in the next couple of hours then certainly by tomorrow morning. then we will have to see how the president reacts, will he voluntarily appear in new york? will he resist? i don't think he will be taken away in handcuffs, but he is going to get the treatment someone of his stature will normally get what he will not get special treatment. there will be a photograph, a mug shot, things like that, but that is all that remains to be seen. julian: unbelievable that we are hearing us to that mug shot that donald trump will have to take in new york city. we are hearing from trump world, our abc embassy get of unit saying they are now welcoming this, that they like the idea of the former president having a mug shot, they might be putting this on a t -- on a
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and using it as part of the campaign until 2024. if you could underscore how unprecedented this is, and that we are truly walking on uncharted territory right here with a former president being indicted of crime. >> it's really unprecedented in at least two different ways. those are good questions. the first, there is never been a former president charged with a crime in this country. richard nixon was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the water get proceedings back in 1970's, but he was not charged, he was allowed to resign and there were no follow-up charges. the other thing is, this is a state case, not a federal case. there are 50 states and how many 1000 counties with da's around this country, so for a da even in the great state of new york to even charge a former president is really triggering a potential future that could be
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very disturbing to lots of people depending on your ideological position in the future. so we don't really know how he will be handled. the idea that he is embracing this, it's not surprising, look, i'm sorry to say that when somebody is indicted, they don't have a lot of opportunity. they deny the charges and have to -- they can't change the fact of a grand jury having voted to indict and a district attorney filing those charges. so they've got to do something. whether this works to their advantage politically or disadvantage i think is something that we don't know yet. julian: we also heard in johnson suu kyi's reporting there that apparently santucci had a phone call with the former president, asking the former president directly if he plans on turning himself in, then saying at that point, i'm not ready to say essentially at this time. how do you think this can play
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out if the president does not willingly surrender? >> that's going to be a serious problem. that's going to be a serious problem. we have in this country -- there's a whole set of procedures when you are indicted in one state by a court that sits in a different state. the constitutional obligation actually is for the state of florida to enable trump or whoever is charged to come to new york, willingly or otherwise. normally you would be given the opportunities voluntarily show up. if he refuses to do that and says i'm not going anywhere, i think the governor of florida at that point would have to make serious decisions about whether to engage state law enforcement and honor the full faith and credit of the new york grand jury and new york court. of course we know the governor of florida is a republican, a conservative republican, but is in some sense at odds with president trump for the --
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former president trump for the presidential nomination. there are serious problems that could happen very quickly and donald trump never has done what is expected. so you might say, we would've spent them to do the normal thing, i wouldn't expect that with this particular person. my guess is there is a lot of strategizing going on all over the place here, in florida, new york, in mar-a-lago, perhaps in other districts where he is being investigated, he is got a criminal investigation happening in georgia, two different federal investigations happening in washington, d.c. he's got a lot on his plate. how this plays out politically i think will be unfortunately disturbing to watch and somewhat interesting to watch. julian: it will certainly be that. great point there, rory, as we see with f he trmeor i do want to mention the other outstanding cases against the former president. it seems as though this grand jury indictment is the first
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domino to fallm so to speak -- to fall, so to speak. how do you see this indictment affecting the other outstanding cases against the former president? >> that is such a good question. what's going to happen in georgia? you've got another local district attorney with serious charges that president trump tried to in some sense get a state official to sort of falsify information to affect a presidential election. and it is unclear exactly whether this indictment would encourage that local prosecutor to go forward, or ask that prosecutor to wait, what do you do if there are two different states with indictments against this person? how do we handle that? the federal government, the attorney general, merrick garland, has appointed an independent person, jack smith, investigating both the classified records, the taking
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of the records to florida, that is one, and also the president's role in fomenting the january attack on the u.s. capitol which was pretty clearly an effort to interfere with the procedural lawfulness of the presidential election at that point. that's a couple of serious federal investigations. i would think those are going to proceed on exactly whatever course they are already on. i think the federal government will not worry about the new york indictment and it will either charge or not charge as they think is appropriate. but it could affect the timing and it could affect procedurally -- donald trump can only be in one place at that time, he has not yet mastered that technique of being ni two different places -- being in two different places. there's a sort of procedural thicket of how to get through indictment spending in different courts at different times, or at the same time.
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understand, we only have one indictment here and an indictment is not a conviction. i really think we need to emphasize that, he is accused, there has not yet been a trial or proof of his intent, and that is the question, what did he know and intent about that payment -- intend about that payment? we pretty much know the payment happened. you have to let things take their course. the impatience of some people about this in this country is not going to be rewarded. it's not going to be a fast moving target. julian: we have certainly been watching this all play out over the last seven years now. there were allegations of this hush money payment leading into the 2016 presidential election and here we are, 2023, with this now indictment of the former president. final question, rory, what will you be watching most closely in the days ahead as we see how this all unfolds? >> first of all i want to see what the indictment says and the wording of the indictment and i want to compare it to the statues that are charged in the
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case. that would be the first thing for any lawyer to do. second, i'm going to watch what this particular defendant does. what does he do with this indictment? how was he treated? how do the other actors behave? i hope he does not lunch us into some constitutional -- plunge ys us into some constitutional crisis with multiple states coming in. if someone is avoiding arrest and they have been charged, law enforcement ha to exercise force. we have seen how law enforcement exercises force against other people charged with serious crime. i would urge the president to not try to bring that on, but he's not listening to me. julian: we appreciate your time, thank you so much, rory little. i have a feeling we will be speaking with you a lot more in the coming days as we watch this all play out. appreciate your time. >> thank you.
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julian: welcome back. if you haven't checked out one of these ai programs like chatgpt4, he really should. the so-called -- you really should. the so-called artificial intelligent models could be one of the defining moments of our time. while that can be used to help kids with homework or save your time with a work project, there is growing concern that technology a good one to get so smart it replaces your job, maybe my job, and maybe make
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humans obsolete. they are calling for a pause on new ei training for six months. amtech tech signed onto this petition. joining us now is the director of the future life institute. he's a distant wished professor -- distinguished professor of physics at uc santa cruz. appreciate your time. >> thanks for having me here. julian: we have seen the large language ai programs get really smart really fast. chatgpt for example one from failing in the bar exam to scoring on the top 10% on this really tough test in less than six months. clearly the advancements are happening quickly. but why are you calling for this pause now? >> i think this is sort of a defining moment with chat gpt4. the models we have had before have done a few things better than humans, they've really played well, recognized
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images better or as good as humans, but we have not seen ai models be better at humans at many different things, that's the sort of superpower humans had. we can think of lots of different things. we can problem solve. but ai systems up until now have been much more narrow. the early defining thing about gpt4 is, it is as good as a human at many things, it can write poems, pass the bar exam, right programs, take ap exams. while there are still people who are good at any particular -- better than chatgpt4, it is as good as many people that they do. so it really is a general-purpose ai system that we have not really seen before. julian: but this in perspective for folks who are not paying attention as closely as you are? the changes ai could be bringing into our everyday lives.
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will this be more or less transformational than the dot com boom and social media revolution that's become commonplace but really changed our lives in a significant way? >> i think this is going to be much bigger actually because those gave us new ways of communicate and with each other or new ways of interacting with each other but these really are new sort of intelligences on earth that are not human. that signs a little bit sign sectiony. -- science fictiony. but when you interact with chatgpt4, it is generating the same sort of results and feedback and doing the same sorts of tasks human does in a general way, but it is not a human, it is a machine that operates very differently. it is a different form of intelligence. than us. as dobro more powerful and permit more parts of the society, we are going to see a transformational and rapid change i think. julian: i would like to read an expert of the petition you're
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circulating that now has more than 1700 signatures. it says in part, should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? should we automate away all the jobs including the fulfilling one and developed nonhuman mindset might outnumber, outsmart, replace us? developed only once. we are confident that the effects will be positive and the risk will be manageable. how confident are you that this will be the reality if guardrails are not put in place for the ai industry right now? >> unfortunately, we are not on track for this at all. i think what we've seen is ai models are being released without any sort of confidence the results are going to be beneficial or that risks are going to be manageable. we saw a deployment of the earlier version of gpt4 via bing
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that had all sorts of strange things when people started into -- started interacting with it. it was pushed as a search engine but behaved in strange ways. i think we are seeing things that are being frankly rushed to the market. there is a huge competition between the tech companies to bring these powerful ai models to market, to put them into products and so on. and that market, that competitive force makes it very hard for the very responsible people in those companies want to make these models safe and operate well to do their jobs. they are going to be pushed to deploy their products as fast as possible and that is just a very difficult thing to mesh with the sort of safety and oversight that we really need as these come into the market. julian: we only have about 15-20 seconds left, very quickly what should be is responsible ai regulations look like in your perspective? >> there are lots of ideas. lots of ideas in the letter.
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the most important thing is a policymakers wake up to the idea that this has to happen very rapidly. we need to governance and regulatory mechanisms. we need them now, in collaboration with experts. julian: ok. anthony, the future of life institute executive director, we appreciate your time and thanks for being here. thank you so much for joining us for this abbreviated version of "getting answers" on abc7. we will be here at 3 p.m. every day getting answers from experts around the bay area. "world news tonight" with david muir is next. they will have much more coverage on the former president's indictment. we will be back here with abc7 news at 4:00 shortly. take care. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]
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♪ ♪ >> david: tonight, breaking news as we, on the air. the indictment of former president donald trump. tonight, multiple sources confirming the new year grand jury voting late today to indict donald trump, to criminally charge him in the hush money investigation, the payment made to stormy daniels before the 2016 election. they have claimed it was to keep daniels quiet about a sexual encounter she says she had with trump. reported communications already between the trump team and the secret service about how to bring him back to new york to face these charges, and the reaction, what he told a
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