President Trump's Brother, Robert Passes Away.
KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR: We have breaking news for you now. U.S. President Donald Trump suffered a great personal loss. He says his younger brother, Robert Trump died Saturday in a New York hospital. So we're going to go right to Correspondent Kristen Holmes in Bedminster, New Jersey. Kristen, a real blow for the President here. We know his brother had been in ill health for some time. What more can you tell us about Roberts and his passing?</s>KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the White House hasn't given us an actual cause of death right now. But as you said, we didn't know that he had been seriously ill in and out of the hospital since last spring. He was 72 years old. And this came a day after President Trump made an impromptu stop in New York City. We knew he was coming here to New Jersey. The last minute they announced that he was going to be visiting his brother Robert in a hospital in New York. And he told reporters at that time that hopefully he would be OK but that he was having a really hard time. Now, he did pass away earlier tonight. And I want to read to you the statement that was released from the White House because this is really the most emotional and touching thing we've heard from President Trump. He said, "It is with a heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother Robert peacefully passed away tonight. He was not just my brother, he was my best friend. He'll be greatly missed, but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart. Robert, I love you. Rest in peace". Again, a very emotional, very simple statement from President Trump. But it clearly goes to show you the relationship that the two of them have. We know that President Trump said that his brother supported his candidacy for President 1,000 percent. His brother had been a top executive at the Trump Organization. So they had a very close relationship. And recently, as we know, Mary Trump, who is related to President Trump had tried -- has written a book and Robert Trump was the one who put out the restraining order to try and block the book from being published. So clearly working on his brother's behalf, they had a strong relationship. And again, we are still waiting for some details here as to what exactly happened, what was this illness, but he did pass earlier tonight. And I do want to say that he even talked about his brother the last three days, quite often. Last night, at a police event with the New York police union. He said that his brother loved the police. He's referred to him as how close they are. And this is a man who doesn't have a lot of very close friends and very close family. He's very particular about who he keeps near him. And it's very clear that his relationship with Robert was something he valued deeply in something he cherished. Kim?</s>BRUNHUBER: All right. Since -- even though he supported his brother, he was very loyal, very different from Donald Trump. Not flamboyant, he didn't seek the limelight. So what more can you tell him -- tell us about his personality?</s>HOLMES: Well, he was very behind the scenes. He had a role, as I said at the Trump Organization, but he was never one who tried to steal the limelight from Donald Trump. He always put his brother front and center. One of the iconic pictures of Robert Trump is him hugging his brother at the Republican National Convention in 2016. Again, he wasn't somebody who was out there doing interviews, the way we see so many associates of President Trump who really want that spotlight themselves. They crave that. We never heard from Robert Trump. I had a friend of mine who has been following the Trump candidacy very closely who said that he didn't even know that he was a brother of Donald Trump because he just wasn't out there. So, you know, it's an interesting dynamic the two of them clearly had.</s>BRUNHUBER: All right. Well, thank you very much for that. So once again, Robert Trump, President Trump's brother, dead at 72. We return now to our CNN Special Report, Counts on Controversy: Inside the Electoral College.</s>BERMAN: The silence, the rage, election year 2020.</s>ALEXANDER: A lot of unprecedented things that have occurred. We have no idea yet how the pandemic will play itself out. And certainly the issues that we have seen with race over the summer will likely spill over into the fall. We're thinking about trying to eliminate chaos. Chaos in many ways will be baked in to the 2020 election.</s>M. BACA: So funny story, I was leaving Colorado after I voted to go spend some time with my family. And I was driving through some small little town in New Mexico and I stopped to get gas and I see on the newspaper in there says, no Hamilton electors here. I'm like I'm in this small little CALPHO (ph) town in the middle of nowhere and here they are talking about the Electoral College.</s>BERMAN: Former Colorado Elector Micheal Baca did more than just pull into a gas station. When he and fellow elector Bret Chiafalo started the Hamilton electors, they fuelled an argument that had never been settled.</s>CHIAFALO: That we have the opportunity to get a question answered that should have gotten answered in the last 200 years. How do we actually elect our president? What our electors and what purpose do they serve? Bret Chiafalo voted for Republican Colin Powell. Micheal Baca voted for Ohio Governor John Kasich. Their idea, to vote for a more moderate Republican instead of the state's popular vote winner to prevent Donald Trump from winning the White House. Chiafalo's vote counted, Baca's did not. And the plan didn't work. But their decision to vote faithlessly, well, that would linger amid controversy in court filings for four years. Where this gets really interesting, really complicated and really to be, frank, combustible is what happens if a faithless elector were to shift the outcome of an election?</s>LESSIG: Yes, that's right. In 2000 election, were two electors switching would have flipped resolved. I think begins a series of elections where we're going to see very close results going forward. So that makes this question much more important in the future.</s>WEISER: They are playing a very dangerous game. The American people have absolutely come to expect when votes are cast on Election Day. The presidential election is decided. To undo that 220 years of history, we defy expectations and constitutional tradition.</s>BERMAN: And that's why the Supreme Court added Baca and Chiafalo to its docket.</s>WEISER: The Supreme Court has never ruled on this. We are going to be in uncharted territory. This is a Pandora's Box.</s>JOHN ROBERTS, CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES: Oh, yay. Oh, yay. We will hear argument first this morning in Case 19-465, Chiafalo and others versus the state of Washington.</s>CHIAFALO: Listening to a Supreme Court case and hearing Justice Ginsburg say my last name was completely surreal.</s>BERMAN: What's that like, all of a sudden, you realize, hey, wait a second. The guys who wrote the Constitution, they wrote about me.</s>M. BACA: They didn't write about me, they wrote about the role of the electors. And I think that's what -- that's important that the court is going to address here.</s>LESSIG: The question in these cases is straightforward, do the states have the power to control through law how an elector may vote? They do not.</s>BERMAN: Larry Lessig was one of four attorneys arguing the Colorado and Washington case is about faithless electors. Historic and unprecedented arguments about bribery and chaos, heard by the Supreme Court, by phone.</s>SAMUEL ALITO, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: Suppose an elector is bribed between the time of the popular vote and the time when the electors vote. Can the state remove that elector?</s>LESSIG: Your Honor, we believe that prior to the vote, the state's power is to assure that the person who shows up has not engaged in the criminal activity. Of course, the claim someone has been bribed is a charge. It needs to be proven. And so we believe there's going to be a difficulty there with the bribery.</s>ROBERTS: Thank you, Counsel. General Purcell?</s>NOAH PURCELL, SOLICITOR GENERAL OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON: I'm somewhat confused about exactly what their position is on this, but it seems they're saying you cannot remove someone even if you know they accepted a bribe, unless you can somehow move through the criminal process before the electors meet. And that's just absurd.</s>ALEXANDER: It's a great argument to eliminate elector discretion. However, when asked point blank, can you find a case where an elector has been bribed? The state could find none. And so as a hypothetical, it was very flashy. It was very sensational, but it's something real. It didn't really hold water.</s>M. BACA: It was rather interesting to hear the questions that the judges asked. They dealt a lot with hypotheticals, whereas, I wish that they dealt with the reality of the case.</s>BERMAN: On the subject of reality, some of the questions including those from Justice Clarence Thomas, seemed a little out of this world.</s>CLARENCE THOMAS, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: Counsel the elector, who had promised to vote for the winning candidate, could suddenly say, you know, I'm going to vote for Frodo Baggins, and that's -- I'd really like Frodo Baggins. And you're saying, under your system, you can't do anything about that.</s>JASON HARROW, ATTORNEY: Your Honor, I think there is something to be done because that would be the vote for a non-person, you know, no matter how big a fan many people are of Frodo Baggins.</s>ALEXANDER: So when Frodo Baggins entered the Supreme Court, of course, you knew that that was going to trend on Twitter, as opposed to faithless electors. And to hear it come from Clarence Thomas was truly special.</s>CHIAFALO: What stood out the most is the opposition argued mostly about the chaos in my costs, and not on any actual constitutional or legal standing.</s>ALITO: Those who disagree with your arguments say that it would lead to chaos, where the popular vote is close and changing just a few votes would alter the outcome and there would be a long period of uncertainty about who the next president was going to be. Do you deny that that is a good possibility if your argument prevails?</s>LESSIG: We deny it's a good possibility. We don't deny it's a possibility. And we believe there are risks on either side.</s>CHIAFALO: We can't make decisions based on whether it's going to cause chaos or not, or else we'd be flipping parts of the Constitution right and left.</s>BRETT KAVANAUGH, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good morning, what is the purpose of having electors?</s>ALEXANDER: There was a bit of silence with that. If we're going to bind electors, we're all they are, are automatons just casting a ballot, then what is their purpose? If it's merely ceremonial, is that something we really want to have in the American electoral process?</s>BERMAN: Bret Chiafalo and Micheal Baca have been fighting for answers for four years. A fight they want to win, but that's not their ultimate goal.</s>CHIAFALO: I hope we win. But I've always said through this entire process from day one, I am against the Electoral College. It should not exist. It should be gone as soon as possible. I'm just simply trying to represent my duties under the Constitution as best I can. And it's the Electoral College that takes away the individuals vote, not the individual electors.</s>M. BACA: It wasn't my ambition to be an elector. This wasn't about me, this wasn't about my politics, this wasn't about my ideology. I'm just the guy who was trying to do what was best for the country.