Georgia jury subpoenas Giuliani, Graham in Trump criminal probe

Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman joins the Live show to discuss the ongoing case against Donald Trump for alleged election interference in Georgia as well as President Biden's plans for debt forgiveness for defrauded student borrowers.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: Top allies of former president Donald Trump have been summoned in the latest round of subpoenas in the ongoing criminal investigation into Trump's election interference. Yahoo Finance senior columnist Rick Newman is here to break this all down. Rick.

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah, this is important. People probably have gotten sick of trying to follow along with all this litigation, looking into President Trump, former president Trump, and what happened in the 2020 election. But what's happening in Fulton County, Georgia is very important.

So there are no charges yet, but this is a grand jury that's looking into the possibility of the Trump committed-- excuse me-- election fraud in Georgia in 2020. And there's very interesting evidence that he may have done that, most notably that phone call that there's a recording of, where Trump asked election officials in Georgia if they could find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. That was what Trump said on that recording.

So the Fulton County DA is looking into whether that may constitute election fraud. And now we've got word of these subpoenas for Rudy Giuliani, Trump's former lawyer, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, and other people who were trying to help Trump overturn the election in 2020. So that does not mean that Giuliani and Lindsey Graham and these people are necessarily targets of the investigation. It means they are seeking their testimony to figure out what they might know about what Trump was trying to do in 2020. So this is a real serious legal threat to Trump. And this is one to continue paying attention to.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah, certainly will. And switching gears here as well, the Biden administration is proposing new steps to ease student loan forgiveness. What's the latest? What do we know about this, Rick?

RICK NEWMAN: So this is another small step. This would be a change in the rule that would make it easier for students who went to for-profit colleges to try to get reimbursed if they think there's some evidence that they were defrauded. So Trump has-- excuse me, Biden-- we were talking about Trump before. He's clearly not president anymore. He lost fair and square. Biden has-- he has done some debt relief already for people who were defrauded by for-profit schools. And that included some schools that actually went out of business.

So this is kind of a continuation of that effort. It's not related to the people who already got their loans forgiven, but to people who might be in that position in the future. This still is far short of what some Democrats want Biden to do, which is forgive up to $50,000 of debt for millions of students. He's taking very small steps. He has hinted that he might do some broader debt forgiveness, but he keeps not doing it. So Biden going very incrementally on this one.

BRAD SMITH: Is it possible that this incremental move is something that could be saved as a much broader move towards the midterm election as well?

RICK NEWMAN: I'm scratching my head over what Biden really intends to do here. He has a plan. And just to remind everybody who's trying to remember what Biden's view on this, when he ran for president in 2020, Biden said he does favor student debt forgiveness of up to $10,000. That was his cap, but an important caveat-- he said Congress should do that through legislation. It should not be something the president tries to do through executive action, which could be challenged in court.

And of course, the situation now is that we've had Democrats who control both houses of Congress with narrow majorities. And they have not passed any kind of student debt relief. They basically just punted over to Biden, saying, we can't do this in Congress. Why don't you just do it by executive action? So, not clear if Biden is going to do this by the midterms. But if he's going to do it at all, for sure it is going to happen before the November election. So maybe he's trying to time it perfectly and do it-- I don't know-- in September or October, when people will still have that on their mind when they go to vote in November, if they decide to vote.

BRAD SMITH: All right, Yahoo Finance's own Rick Newman, always appreciate the breakdown there, Rick.

RICK NEWMAN: See you guys.

BRAD SMITH: See you.