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Biden Weighs Legal Options as Trump Threatens Transfer of Power; DOJ Official in Charge of Voter Fraud Quits after Barr Memo; Biden Task Force Adviser Says, U.S. About to Enter COVID Hell. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired November 10, 2020 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[13:00:02]

JOHN KING, CNN INSIDE POLITICS: Don't go anywhere, a busy news day. Brianna Keilar picks up our coverage right now. Have a good day.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN RIGHT NOW: Hi there, I'm Brianna Keilar, and I want to welcome viewers in the United States and around the world.

President-elect Biden's team is now considering legal action against the Trump White House for refusing to accept the election results and begin the presidential transition. He is getting no backup from the Senate, where Mitch McConnell is backing Trump's refusal to accept the outcome of the democratic election.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): Until the Electoral College votes, anyone who is running for office can exhaust concerns about counting in any court of appropriate jurisdiction. That's not unusual, should not be alarming. At some point here, we'll find out finally who is certified in each of these states and the Electoral College will determine the winner and that person will be sworn in on January 20th. No reason for alarm.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, Biden is going to speak here in a short time in Wilmington, Delaware, where CNN Political Correspondent Arlette Saenz is covering the transition. And, Arlette, the refusal to proceed with peaceful transition of power, where should things be at this point if President Trump were not taking this extraordinary position?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, this roadblock is really impeding some very important technical aspects of the transition that needs to take place. There are things like having access to million dollars of funding, there's also not having access to classified, highly classified information, having access to that, or being able to discuss it.

Also, just looking ahead, the transition would be unable to conduct background checks on some of these cabinet picks. So there is a lot that's currently in limbo for President-elect Biden's transition because of this decision by the GSA administrator not to sign that very important document.

And Biden, over the course of the weekend, had told his allies to try to give some space to Republicans and the president, to try to accept the reality of what is happening here. But now, Biden's allies are recognizing that they may need to step up and take on a tougher stance going forward. Transition officials have said that they are even considering legal options as a way to respond to this, as his transition right now, some of that work is in limbo.

But, publicly, Biden is still pushing forward and moving ahead with conducting some official business. We learned that the president-elect has held phone calls with two world -- at least two world leaders today, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as well as French President Emmanuel Macron. And so he is still moving forward trying to do some of that business of this transition work.

And you're going to hear from Biden a little later this afternoon as he talks about the Affordable Care Act as the Supreme Court now is hearing arguments about the future of that law. This was the Obama administration's signature health care initiative which Biden has vowed to protect. And he is expected to speak about that a little later this afternoon.

But right now, it is really his transition, some important technical aspects of it that are under threat.

KEILAR: All right. Arlette, thank you so much for all of that from Wilmington.

The president of the United States still has not conceded this race. And if the nation weren't so numb to his antics, it would shake America to its democratic core and it still might.

For perspective, four years ago today, President Obama welcomed then President-elect Trump to the White House, a traditional visit to signal the peaceful transition of power. Four years ago today, former First Lady Michelle Obama welcomed Melania Trump for tea in the yellow Oval Room as part of the peaceful transition of power.

Four years ago today, then Vice President Biden welcomed his successor, Mike Pence, to the vice presidential residence as part of that peaceful transition of power.

12 years ago today, George W. Bush welcomed President-elect Obama to the Oval, to the White House, as part of the peaceful transition of power.

But today, instead of welcoming President-elect Joe Biden to the White House to signal a peaceful transfer of power, President Trump, who lost the election, is in the White House getting very mad at his television set if accounts by sources to CNN in the past few days are any indication. He is refusing to cooperate with peaceful transition of power that is

the bedrock of our democracy, while also refusing to try and slow down a pandemic that is now worsening at an alarming rate and killing Americans, thousands of them.

[13:05:11]

And instead of a badly needed intervention, his biggest enablers are once again bowing to the insecurities of a lame duck. The sycophants on television who get rich in flaming the tensions on the ground from their orbit of Planet Trump and his enablers at the highest levels of government, like Attorney General Bill Barr, who is launching DOJ investigation into widespread election fraud with the only evidence being the president's hurt feelings.

Richard Pilger, who is the head of the DOJ office that prosecutes election crimes or was, just quit in protest. Barr is no stranger to doing Trump's bidding, despite its dangers to the country. His list of acts in service of Planet Trump is long and questionable, misleading the public about the findings of the Mueller investigation, trying to prevent a whistleblower complaint about the president's phone call asking Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden from going to Congress, intervening in the Michael Flynn case, intervening in the Roger Stone case, firing the head of Southern District of New York while he was investigating Trump's inner circle, trying to have the DOJ represent the president in a lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll, who alleged the president raped her in the 1990s, deploying federal troops to forcibly remove protesters so the president could pose for a photo op by the White House, and personally spending $30,000 for a holiday party at Trump's D.C. hotel, repeatedly spreading disinformation about mail-in voting and suggesting communities that don't respect police will lose police protection.

As if that's not enough, Barr has been compelled to shower the president with praise.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL: He is very easy to work with. He has a good sense of humor. He's very direct. He's accomplished in the face of great resistance.

The president went out at the beginning of this thing and really where states wouldn't like.

Politicization of decisions like hydroxychloroquine has been amazing to me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: But on Planet Trump, loyalty is demanded by the president though not repaid. The president attacked Barr in recent weeks for not prosecuting his political enemies.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes, the greatest political crime in the history of our country, Bill Barr is going to go down either as the greatest attorney general in the history of the country or he's going to go down as a very sad situation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: In the Senate, Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is refusing to recognize the winner of this race.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCCONNELL: President Trump is 100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: It is not only weird that McConnell is fueling the president's baseless claims about a fraudulent though as he believes in the results enough to pose with new senators yesterday with wins were recorded on the same ballots as Joe Biden's. The Republican senators who are still silent about Biden's win, they're enablers too. And he is the list. We're going to leave this up for a second because it is rather long.

But if a GOP senator is not named Romney, Sasse, Murkowski or Collins, they're on this list, where sound of silence more abundant than that Simon and Garfunkel song when the duo wrote about silent masses who didn't use their voices, quote, and the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made, end quote, that they make.

These senators who are not powerless, they're just afraid of consequences of using their power, which is where courage comes in. And so far, at least, they lack the courage to serve their country over their party.

The president's children are supporting their father's flailing attempt to upend a legal election outcome. Melania Trump and Jared Kushner have advised Trump to consider accepting the election loss. But Kushner, it appears, has also moved onto advice the president might not actually take, suggesting that he hold rallies, pushing for a recount, as has Rudy Giuliani and campaign aide, Jason Miller.

Now, yesterday, I compared that trio to the ones who take their heartbroken friend who can't understand that a majority of America just isn't that into him out to a bar after a bad breakup. But the longer this constitutional foolishness drags on, the more they're like a band of hooligans driving their friend directly to the ex's house holding a boom box, blasting Peter Gabriel. Except, this time, it's not going to work out for Lloyd Dobler. The voters have spoken. Trump can't just say anything, he has got to accept the truth.

But he has so much help in avoiding that and his biggest enabler is, of course, Fox.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: We don't know how many votes were stolen on Tuesday night. We don't know anything about the software that many say was rigged. We don't know. We have to find out.

[13:10:00]

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: And there's no question that mass mail-in voting, it's been an unmitigated disaster. We must never again allow Democrats to foist this on our country given what we're seeing days and days later.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: They want you to believe that this week's vote and same-vote counting process is totally normal and it's above board. Do you really believe that? They want you to ignore the irregularities, the lack of transparency, the serious instances where the law was broken.

LOU DOBBS, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Biden's campaign says they're defending the election. They deny what they're really doing, which is stealing it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: But even on Fox, the jig is up, man. Neil Cavuto couldn't keep up with the charade.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEIL CAVUTO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Well, I just think we have to be very clear, she's charging, the other side is welcoming fraud and welcoming illegal voting. Unless she has more details to back that up, I can't, in good countenance, continue showing you this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, later, his colleague took a veiled shot at him for that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: In a democracy, you cannot ignore honest questions from citizens, you're not allowed. You can't dismiss them out of hand as crazy or immoral for asking. You can't just cut away from coverage you don't like.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: You can cut away from speech that is dangerous lies. In fact, you should. And in a democracy, you can't just ignore votes from citizens in the name of entertaining so-called honest questions, as he put it, that are based on conspiracy theories about voter fraud.

The mixed messages from Fox underscore how Trump's hold on the network is slipping away, at least for some there, just like his days in the White House. But for Fox Prime Time, perhaps it's not a surprise, they're sore losers. In 2016, they were soar winners as they aligned themselves with Trump acolytes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Hillary Clinton is still refusing to accept the real reason she lost to President-elect Donald Trump, instead of acknowledging that she was a terribly flawed, corrupt candidate with a very long track record of failure and a larger majority of American voters didn't like, poll was dishonest, Hillary Clinton is blaming everything but herself for her election loss.

KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT: They have to decide whether they're going to interfere with him finishing his business, interfere with a peaceful transition, transfer of power to President- elect Trump and Vice President-elect Pence or if they're going to be a bunch of cry babies and sore losers about an election that they can't turn around.

HANNITY: What you said and what the left is doing is you're advancing a false conspiracy theory as to why you lost, you can't accept responsibility.

The sore loser left, acting like spoiled little brats, they didn't get what they wanted for Christmas, so now they're going to ruin the holiday for everyone else.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is a sore loser, Barack Obama, trying to de- legitimize the election of Donald Trump, who is our president-elect, who won fair and square, 306 Electoral College votes. This wasn't even close.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, Collins right there, by the way, was sentenced to prison for insider trading.

Even Vladimir Putin, who is still silent on Biden's win, had something to say about sore losers in 2016.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Democrats lost once again and they are looking for someone who is guilty of this.

I think this is simply humiliating for themselves. One has to know how to lose decently.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Even President Trump has made that clear as he addressed this topic during a Thanksgiving turkey pardoning at the White House where a turkey names Carrots refused to concede to the winner.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The winner of this vote was decided by a fair and open election conducted on the White House website. This was a fair election. Unfortunately, Carrots refused to concede and demanded a recount, and we're still fighting with Carrots. And I will tell you, we have come to a conclusion. Carrots, I'm sorry to tell you, the result did not change.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Too bad for carrots, but who's the turkey now.

And now, let's talk with an expert about the director of the DOJ's election crimes branch resigning instead of carrying out Bill Barr's orders permitting election fraud investigations before the votes are certified. I want to bring Harry Litman. He served as deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department.

And, Harry, Richard Pilger, he wrote in an email to colleagues that Barr is issuing, quote, an important new policy abrogating the 40- year-old non-interference policy for ballot fraud investigations in the period prior to elections becoming certified and uncontested.

For people who are not familiar with ins and outs of election security law, explain to us why Barr's move is so significant.

HARRY LITMAN, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL: Sure. You know, I have been trying to stay cool for the last 24 hours because there's really no great risk here, but you've got me worked up again. That was quite a tour de force of what's odious here.

[13:15:02]

So, Richard Pilger, 28-year-old veteran, completely respected, resigns because Barr has completely changed the written policy. We're in a very delicate period that federal law recognizes between the election and the certification, and it is express written DOJ policy that you keep your mitts off, because you don't want to undermine. There is nothing they can do here to change the election.

What they can do is suggest there is investigation and have people worried, have people afraid that maybe they'll impound the ballots, nothing that they could really do. So, for him to change it, A, was a rank subrogation of really important DOJ policies and it speaks volumes when a guy like Richard Pilger steps down.

And they could say, well, it is just his day in court, but it is so much more than that, as you spelled out. It is demoralizing for the election. It keeps transition from going forward. It energizes the base as they want it to do. It makes Trump able to raise money for the Georgia election and to retire his own campaign debt and it just makes us look like an insecure possible banana republic.

The bottom line is they can't do anything here, but it is an outrageous dereliction with one more tangible sign that the longtime professional prosecutor is just resigning.

KEILAR: Yes. And as you mention, the president is not conceding. His administration is blocking transition funds to Biden's team. And now you have this move by Barr. What legal options does Biden have to force his transition team to get maybe not just the funds it needs but really the access? That might be what's so key when it comes to national security access to sensitive and classified information and the ability to discuss it and plan.

LITMAN: Completely. First, it is both. But on the national security level, I just want to mention, the 9/11 commission said that one of the reasons that Bush hadn't revved up his national security apparatus soon enough was because of the whole mess of the Bush v. Gore election. There are real costs here in national security. Not just that, as you say, the actual ability to be able to go forward with just standard planning, background, investigations of new appointees. This is not a benign move.

And when McConnell says, oh, it is nothing unusual, it is completely unusual because, and the bottom line, it shouldn't be forgotten here, there's not a shred, not a shred of evidence of these completely hysterical claims of widespread fraud or irregularities. There's a couple votes here and three there that could never change the election. No court will do anything with this, DOJ won't do anything with this, but it really harms the ability for Biden and the country to move forward.

KEILAR: And, I mean, when you couple that, this sort of inability to really rev up the national security apparatus, plus you have the president firing the defense secretary, there was a Pentagon official who resigned a day after that. Are you worried about there being -- I mean, it sounds like you're saying there are national security vulnerabilities that are caused. Could this turn into a crisis?

LITMAN: Yes. So any national security expert will tell you that, it is just well known that during a transition, even a normal, lawful transition is a time that adversaries might try to exploit us in ways that we don't even know. That's part of what was going on with Mike Flynn. So it is a worry.

Now that we're in this enhanced instability because of what Barr has done, because of what the Republican senators have done, yes, it aggravates the possibility and presents a real risk of crisis, and that's in addition, again, Brianna, to the entire sort of work a day necessity of a government being able to get ready and move on day one.

We can't have any gaps in the executive branch. And if they can't get in there until a few weeks before, it is really calamitous.

KEILAR: Yes, they need to get in there. All right, Harry, thank you so much for your expertise. Harry Litman, we really appreciate it.

The coronavirus crisis is worsening at an alarming rate. Hospitalizations are surging. A Biden coronavirus task force expert says the U.S. is entering COVID hell.

Plus, Georgia Republicans are battling each other just weeks before runoff elections that will determine balance of power in the Senate.

[13:20:02] And just a short time from now, Joe Biden will speak live as the Supreme Court hears arguments over the fate of Obamacare.

This is CNN's special live coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: If you thought we were already in a bad place with coronavirus, well, one expert says we're about to enter hell. Cases are increasing in 44 states, six states are holding steady, there is not one state that is seeing a drop in cases. The U.S. has reported seven straight days of more than 100,000 new daily cases, crossing 10 million total cases.

The spread is skyrocketing, but according to a Biden task force member, that number could double. It could double to 200,000 in a matter of weeks.

[13:25:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, SELECTED TO SERVE ON BIDEN'S COVID-19 ADVISORY BOARD: What America has to understand is we are about to enter COVID hell. It is happening.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And the numbers here, they back that statement up. The nation reported the largest single-day increase in hospitalizations since July 10th. Texas is in a particularly bad spot right now. It is nearing 1 million cases, one of the hardest-hit cities there, El Paso, has been forced to airlift dozens of ICU patients to other cities and to New Mexico. They are out of ICU capacity. The spike of cases and hospitalizations could mean more deaths, even as El Paso has requested another four mobile morgues.

And then in Idaho, the surge is so overwhelming that some hospitals have also had to turn patients away. The state saw the highest number of new hospitalizations Monday after recording record new high cases, high new cases over the weekend.

I want to talk now with Dr. Joshua Kern from Twin Falls, Idaho. He is the vice president of Medical Affairs for St. Luke's Magic Valley Jerome and Wood River Medical Centers. Dr. Kern, thank you so much.

I think it is so important that we talk to folks like you who are on the ground and know what's going on. So, tell us what you're seeing right now in your hospitals.

DR. JOSHUA KERN, VICE PRESIDENT OF MEDICAL AFFAIRS, ST. LUKE'S MAGIC VALLEY, JEROME AND WOOD RIVER: Yes, thanks, Brianna. We're certainly seeing these increased numbers over the last couple of weeks. And we have gotten to the point where we haven't turned patients away, but then required to transfer them to one of our sister hospitals in Boise where they do still have some capacity. But we're facing these issues that you were just talking about.

KEILAR: So how do you handle that? When you have to divert certain people to other hospitals, how do you make a choice about that? Do you transfer folks you already have? Are you moving people with milder symptoms? What do you do?

KERN: Yes. What we do is, basically, when we get to the point where the hospital is full, based on the staffing capacity that we have available, then we'll say no to additional patients. So that will be patients in our own E.R. that will then have to transfer to Boise via ambulance or helicopter or fixed wing plane and say no to surrounding hospitals, which normally we have good partnerships with, because we just can't fit any more patients in.

KEILAR: So, you are tracking these case numbers because you know what follows behind them with hospitalizations and severe cases. Knowing that we are expecting these numbers to go even farther up from where they are, what do you do then? Does anything change about how you're handling patients coming in when you were just completely overwhelmed and you have twice as much demand?

KERN: Yes. We have already been making decisions about not taking pediatric admissions and closing our pediatric floor to save on bed space and staffing. We're saying no to elective procedures that require an overnight stay. As long as the surrounding hospitals, chiefly up in Boise, have capacity, we don't have to start pulling over levers. But as they get full, because we are seeing increasing cases in Ada County and Boise, where our bigger hospitals are, then we have to start making even more decisions.

KEILAR: So when you are saying elective surgeries that you have to put off, I mean, are you talking about hip replacements? What kinds of things are you talking about?

KERN: Yes. I know we have a big backlog in hysterectomies, joint replacements, like you mentioned, knee replacements, hip replacements, anything that, you know, can be put off. And, again, is it optimal, never -- somebody needs a spine surgery or hysterectomy, it is borderline whether it is truly elective, but we're so crunched for staff, we have to make those decisions.

KEILAR: Dr. Kern, look, we wish you the best. We know you have a lot on your plate right now and more headed your way, and what you're dealing with is really representative of the inland west and Midwest as well. So, thanks for joining us.

KERN: I appreciate it. Thank you, Brianna.

KEILAR: There are more results that show the race between the president and Joe Biden. It wasn't that close after all.

Plus, we'll show you how Republicans keep losing the popular vote in modern elections.

And if the Trump administration won't cooperate with the transition, see what falls through the cracks in government. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:30:00]