Parents of Two Benghazi Victims Sue Clinton; 50 National Security Experts Sound Alarm on Trump
CUOMO: All right. So, past controversies back in the headlines for Hillary Clinton. The parents of two Americans killed in the 2012 Benghazi attacks just filed a wrongful death and defamation suit against Clinton. How is this going to affect the whole specter of what Benghazi means in terms of this election? Let's discuss this with the former Democratic governor of Michigan and senior adviser for pro Hillary Clinton super PAC, Jennifer Granholm, and CNN political commentator and former lieutenant governor of South Carolina, Andre Bauer, who is supporting Donald Trump. We also want to talk about this letter that came out to 50 national security experts from your party, but this lawsuit, this plays on heart strings not just on the legalities involved. Wrongful death, whatever you did wrong was the approximate cause of the death of somebody. So, it's a high standard of proof even though it's not criminal, it's civil. Do you think this lawsuit is a political tool? Or do you think that this could win in a court of law, Andre?</s>ANDRE BAUER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I'm not schooled in law. That's probably a better question for the governor, but it's a difficult situation no matter how you slice it on the families, on the voters. It's just a tough thing to talk about. I engaged one time in the Khan situation, no matter what the facts are, you kind of throw those out the window because the emotions in the loss of a child.</s>CUOMO: So what's the point of the lawsuit? How do you rebut a charge like this, governor? You have obviously it's Patricia Smith and Charles Woods, Sean Smith and Tyrone Woods were the two who were lost at Benghazi. What do you do with a lawsuit like this?</s>JENNIFER GRANHOLM (D), FORMER GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN: Well, I do think -- first of all, of course, she is going to say that she -- the families obviously are really important and understandably be sympathetic toward their loss, but there have been nine congressional panels that have looked at this specific question of her wrongdoing and have cleared her of that, so there's a high burden for those who are suing on that given the amount of discovery, the amount of findings that have already occurred through non-partisan or bipartisan panels.</s>CUOMO: The wrongful death part is really where that analysis would lay to bear. The defamation suit I'm assuming is a function of the suggestion of the families that Hillary Clinton told them when she met them that it was the video tape that was to blame for that incited this attack and that later on she denied that. When it came out to the parents, then you lied to us. She says, no, your recollections the recollections of those family members must be off. They're saying that was defamatory, that she's lying about them. What about that claim?</s>GRANHOLM: Yes, I think that too is a high bar you have to reach because there are others who side with her in terms of what she actually said, including the other families' victims who may not be members of this particular lawsuit. I think it's a tough, it may be a tough case. You know, no one can doubt that the pain of these fami1ies is very real and they want to seek some kind of closure. So, you can't blame families for trying what they can, but I do think legally this is going to be a tough one.</s>CUOMO: And then you have a similar situation now in terms of political impact with these 50 former national security advisers. In truth, I don't know how this will play because I never heard of anything like this before where members of a party in mass like this -- I don't know how they got 50 people together this way -- come out and say not only does Donald Trump not know foreign policy, he doesn't seem interested in knowing about it and that he might be the most reckless U.S. president ever. How do you deal with that?</s>BAUER: I would disagree. If you look at Hillary Clinton, she has 40 years of bad judgment and Donald Trump is a change maker. He is running against Washington. I know when I became lieutenant governor, declassified all lieutenant governor employees. You should have seen the chaos, because they aren't used to change. And, look, he's talking about -- he's talking about being a big boy. These other countries that entered into NAFTA, now, they're not paying their fair share, it's time -- the burden is paid by everybody, not the U.S. government. We can't continue as good stewards of the taxpayer dollar to pick up the tab for everybody else. So, I'm glad he's engaged in these conversations. Lot of folks say, oh, you shouldn't talk about that. I think it's wrong as a leader not to say, wait a minute, you're not doing what you said you do and we are and we need do something.</s>CUOMO: So, you dismiss out of hand 50 of your party's top foreign experts saying this is the wrong guy?</s>BAUER: I don't want to ever dismiss anybody, but I think again you're seeing Washington kicking and screaming lot of folks in his own party, because he is saying, look, we're changing Washington. It's broken. It's not working and he ran against the Republican Party establishment from the get-go. So, it's not anything new. The establishment is not going to support him now, they didn't support him before.</s>GRANHOLM: Chris, I think that everyday you are seeing more and more evidence of conservatives backing away from him. I'll be curious to see today for example the fallout from the economic speech. Granted, he went after and absorbed the same tax bracket that Paul Ryan had put out. Gotcha. On the estate tax, though, this is a really interesting one, to me, because he claims to be a blue collar billionaire. And yet .2 percent of Americans pay the estate tax because you have to have $11 million of worth before that even kicks in. How can you -- I get the billionaire part. But the blue collar part, that makes no sense.</s>CUOMO: Well, it plays to people's idea of keeping what's theirs, you know? Your family worked hard for this money. They built their family farm or they built their family fortune, whatever it is or whatever they have and now, the state gets to come in and take more of it after their dead and more of it?</s>GRANHOLM: Except he has been trying to woo the Bernie Sanders people. The question of income inequality plays itself out incredibly in this estate tax question. You want Waltons of Walmart to keep all of their money where they have this -- the Walton family, whatever the statistic is has more than 90 percent of the country or something like that. I mean, why would you continue to keeping this particular provision, getting rid of that particular provision. What does it mean for him and for those who are on his committee that have advised him? How many of them would benefit from it? I think it will be interesting to see how that plays out, too.</s>CUOMO: How do you defend the last point?</s>BAUER: I think that's a great point actually. I didn't think about it like that as far as the Bernie Sanders' folks. I think that he philosophically believes it's wrong. I don't think that he put it out there to try to get votes because he could have just done it after he got elected. I think it's an overall -- look, if you work hard in this country, you sacrifice, you shouldn't have to sell everything when you die when you transfer it --</s>GRANHOLM: Not everything.</s>BAUER: Well, a lot of times that's what happened because the assets in the business, it's not like they're sitting on the money in the bank. So, I think it's an overall what he believes the fiduciary responsibility of the government is and the fairness of taxation.</s>CUOMO: Interesting points. We'll keep spinning it out as we hear more of the details in the economic plan and this big news that came out today of this lawsuit and this 50 experts coming together. Thank you for all of that.</s>GRANHOLM: You bet.</s>CUOMO: Appreciate it. Brianna?</s>KEILAR: Chris, Florida may just be the biggest of all battleground state battles and winning it could be a ticket to the White House for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. This focus on Florida in our special battleground series, ahead.