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Biden Considers Legal Action as Trump Threatens Transfer of Power; U.S. Surpasses 10 Million Coronavirus Cases as Outbreak Worsens. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired November 10, 2020 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: President Trump has refused to concede the election to President-elect Joe Biden. Some in the president's inner circle are telling him to keep fighting.

[05:59:12]

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The General Services Administration is declining to provide federal funds to President- elect Joe Biden's transition team.

JEN PSAKI, SENIOR ADVISOR, BIDEN-HARRIS TRANSITION: Every effort to delay this is delaying us.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: President-elect Joe Biden setting a new tone on coronavirus.

NICK WATT, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: In the U.S., this virus is spreading at record rates, averaging over 100,000 new infections every day.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: A mask is not a political statement, but it is a good way to start pulling the country together.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Tuesday, November 10. It's 6 a.m. here in New York.

And this morning, the president-elect of the United States is calling for unity and a collective effort to fight a raging pandemic.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: This election is over. It's time to put aside the partisanship and the rhetoric that's designed to demonize one another.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BERMAN: The response from the outgoing president? No. The response from the administration? Hell no. The response from Republican leaders in Congress? "F" no.

It's not that unity isn't a priority for them. Unity seems to be the enemy. It will hurt the fundraising. It will hurt the base. It will hurt the runoff elections in Georgia.

American security, democratic traditions, the moral fabric of the country. Meh. Those can wait. Maybe forever.

This morning, top Republicans led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are backing President Trump's refusal to concede and trying to delegitimatize President-elect Biden's victory.

Overnight, Attorney General William Barr shattered Justice Department precedent and instructed federal prosecutors to investigate these bogus allegations of voting irregularities, despite the fact that no real evidence has been presented. This was a move deemed so craven by the top election crimes prosecutor in the Justice Department they resigned his post in protest overnight.

So Americans asking this morning, why should we worry that there's a real effort to overturn the outcome of an election?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: If you're someone who likes evidence, then it is time to worry.

The administration, the Trump administration is blocking the Biden transition. President Trump is preventing President-elect Biden from getting intelligence briefings and critical funding. President Trump is installing his cronies into powerful positions like secretary of defense.

The Biden team is now considering a legal fight.

Meanwhile, this is what the country looks like this morning in terms of the pandemic. A sea of red again, coronavirus still spreading at alarming rates across the United States. Hospitalizations at the highest level since July.

So let's begin with CNN's Joe Johns. He's live at the White House on Trump's obstruction of the transition -- Joe.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

We're talking zero surprise that the president has refused to accept the results of the election. But it has enormous consequences, as senior administration officials fall in line behind the president's intransigence, with the potential to stall, or at least slow down, what's supposed to be a smooth transition of power to the next administration.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS (voice-over): President Trump is still refusing to accept the reality of the election results this morning. And those around him are supporting the delay in allowing President-elect Joe Biden to get to work.

One of them, Attorney General Bill Barr, who authorized federal prosecutors to investigate Trump's baseless claims of voting irregularities in the election. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud or illegal voting in the United States, something officials in battleground states like Michigan are making clear.

JOCELYN BENSON (D), MICHIGAN SECRETARY OF STATE: I'm confident that any inquiries that proceed in Michigan or elsewhere are only going to reveal the truth. This election was smooth, secure, transparent and accurate.

JOHNS: On Capitol Hill, top Republicans including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell amplifying the president's lies.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): We have the system in place to consider concerns. And President Trump is 100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.

JOHNS: Starting the transition of power between the Trump and Biden administrations is extremely critical as the United States grapples with the coronavirus pandemic.

BIDEN: This election is over. It's time to put aside the partisanship and the rhetoric that designed to demonize one another.

JOHNS: But Biden is still unable to unlock all of the resources that should now be available to him as the winner of the election, including access to highly-classified information and intelligence briefings.

Holding the key, the General Services Administration, whose Trump- appointed administrator, Emily Murphy, has refused to cooperate with Biden's transition as president-elect, a GSA spokesman telling CNN, there is no election winner. But that isn't true.

PSAKI: We've all seen these tactics for weeks, if not months, from the Trump team, even before the election. And with every day, with every effort to delay this, it's delaying us getting access to the resources we need.

JOHNS: This after Trump started off his Monday suddenly announcing the firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper in a tweet. Sources fear Esper may not be the last victim of Trump's lame-duck firing spree, telling CNN FBI Director Christopher Wray, CIA director Gina Haspel, and the attorney general could be the next ones to go.

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Frankly, he can do a lot of damage by destabilizing every major agency, by firing a whole series of senior leaders.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: According to a senior administration official, John McGinty (ph), the White House personnel director has put out the word that anybody caught looking for a job will be fired. Just one more indication of how far this administration will go to support a false narrative -- Alisyn.

[06:05:12]

CAMEROTA: OK, Joe. Thank you very much for all of that reporting.

So President-elect Biden's transition team is realizing that the transfer of power will be more difficult than they expected. And they are gearing up for a legal fight.

CNN's Jessica Dean is live in Wilmington, Delaware, with more. What's the plan, Jessica?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning to you, Alisyn.

You know, when all of this happened and the race was called on Saturday, President-elect Biden told his allies, Let's give Republicans some time to get comfortable with this outcome. Let's give them time to catch up to all of this. He really believed they would come around.

But with this delay, it's triggered worry among Biden's allies that this is going to be a much tougher fight than anyone anticipated, that they're going to have trouble getting into these federal agencies and getting them to recognize the legitimacy of this election.

And so we're told now to expect stronger rhetoric from Biden allies, really making the case this election is over. It is time for the transition to begin. They're saying that they believe they have a number of options on the table, some of that being little options if they have to take it.

Of course, Biden hoping it never really had to get to that point. He is still urging unity. He is focused on the tasks at hand, including the coronavirus pandemic yesterday. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: We have to come together to heal the soul of this country so that we can effectively address this crisis as one country where hard- working Americans have each other's backs. And we're united in our shared goal: defeating this virus.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: Now we also expect to see President-elect Biden later today. He's going to give remarks on Affordable Care Act and health care. This as the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in a case that would essentially dismantle the Affordable Care Act. So look for that this afternoon.

Back to you.

BERMAN: Look, it's clear that the Biden team wants to appear presidential. They want to focus on the transition. They may not be able to anymore. They may have to be much more active in addressing what's happening from the White House now. I mean, this is not a drill.

Jessica, thank you very much.

DEAN: Yews.

BERMAN: The U.S. reported more than 111,000 new coronavirus cases. That's the fifth highest day since the pandemic began. Sixteen states reporting record hospitalizations.

CNN's Omar Jimenez is live in El Paso, Texas. Texas is on the verge, Omar, of becoming first state to surpass one million cases.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, John. And here in El Paso, in particular, when you look at the population and the number of active COVID-19 cases we have, about one in 32 people have COVID-19 in El Paso, Texas, alone.

And when you look at the hospitals and how hospitals -- hospitalizations have been trending. We're outside the screening tests at a spot that has more than 240 COVID-19 patients. Again, as those numbers have been rising sharply.

And then when you look at the country overall, this past weekend we saw people celebrating after the election was called by the thousands in cities across the country. Now this week, back to reality.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIMENEZ (voice-over): The United States surpassing 10 million confirmed coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic. One million of those cases reported in just the last ten days.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: And then now, as you see, we're well over 100,000, and that is really something that is unfortunate. Having said that, it is not too late to turn that around.

JIMENEZ: On Monday, the U.S. saw more than 111,000 new cases and 44 states are seeing upticks in the number of cases.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: We're in, essentially, a national sort of state of exponential growth. I think that, you know, we are going to continue to go up in terms of the newly-diagnosed infections, as well as people who -- who need to be hospitalized. And sadly, people who will die.

JIMENEZ: The surge is reaching every corner of the nation. In the Midwest, cases and number of patients hospitalized with the virus continues to rise.

At least 16 states across the country are seeing record hospitalizations, including Ohio, which saw its worst week since the pandemic began. Ohio medical officials warning that hospitals are becoming overwhelmed due to the recent uptick.

That surge also felt in North Dakota, where the governor announced that asymptomatic COVID-positive healthcare workers are now allowed to work in COVID units of licensed healthcare facilities as hospitals face staffing shortages.

GOV. DOUG BURGUM (R-ND): We could be facing a situation in our state in the next two to three weeks where we would be severely constrained on hospital capacity. Some parts of the state are already -- we're already seeing that.

JIMENEZ: In New York City, the positivity rate has increased to well over 2 percent for the first time in months. Mayor Bill de Blasio issued this warning.

[06:10:06]

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK CITY: Now, unfortunately, we're seeing a real growth in the positivity rate in this city. And that is dangerous. So we have one last chance to stop a second wave.

JIMENEZ: And here in El Paso, nearly 900 new coronavirus cases were reported on Monday, and the city currently has a test positivity rate of over 20 percent.

More than 1,000 patients are hospitalized with the virus, and just over 300 of those are in the ICU. The city now has six mobile morgues and is asking for four more.

El Paso is currently under a two-week shutdown that is set to expire on Wednesday. The county judge, though, says he feels they'll need to extend that shutdown.

JUDGE RICARDO A. SAMANIEGO, EL PASO COUNTY: The hospitals are still not manageable. We're having, you know, an inability to handle fatalities. It leaves me no choice but to lean towards an extension of the -- of the order.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JIMENEZ: Now, that extension is something the state is currently fighting, along with some businesses here. They're currently fighting to block that as we await a hearing in an appeals court.

Meanwhile, the positivity rate, the test positivity rate here is a little over 20 percent, which is actually the lowest it's been in a little over a week, to put that in perspective.

And when you look country-wide as we've seen rising numbers, now President-elect Joe Biden urging all Americans to wear a mask, an issue that should be nonpartisan -- John.

BERMAN: Yes. That's the easy part. Omar Jimenez, thanks so much for being with us.

A senior Justice Department official quit because he was so concerned, so outraged by the action that's the attorney general, William Barr, took overnight in regards to the elections. Should you be concerned about efforts to overturn the outcome of the presidential election? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:16:11]

BERMAN: So Alisyn, we've been together a while now. And I have to say that this morning --

CAMEROTA: You're breaking up with me?

BERMAN: I'm not breaking up with you. I know we've had our differences. No.

This morning you came in and looked at the situation facing the country today. And I could just tell, you think things this morning are different. Why?

CAMEROTA: I have reported on Donald Trump for more than a decade, well before he was president. And I know that concession and admitting defeat is not in his DNA. And so the only -- I knew that that wouldn't happen. So people who thought that he would somehow, you know, concede when he lost, that was not going to be possible.

But some people also still thought that there were guardrails, enough guardrails built into either our Constitution or our government where people would, you know, have to say, It is time.

No. The guardrails have come down over the past four years. And so the attorney general. Now he's put one of the cronies in for the Department of Defense. I just see it all playing out.

And in some ways, I think -- and we'll talk to our experts about this -- that the Biden team has been a little slow on the uptake to see that this is what was always planned. I don't know if it was planned, but it was always built into their system that they weren't going to go lightly.

BERMAN: One of the things you said this morning is this is not a drill. What's going on now is not a drill. This is all very real.

The attorney general overnight changing the rules of the Justice Department, allowing for investigations into these bogus allegations of voter fraud.

The guy in charge of the election division resigned in protest overnight, because he thought what the attorney general was doing was so craven.

Let's bring in Elie Honig. He's a former U.S. assistant -- assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. Also with us, CNN anchor Laura Jarrett, who covered the Justice Department for CNN.

Laura, I just want to start with you on the actions taken by the attorney general, specifically what he did, why they are so precedent- shattering, and what it means that this guy, Richard Pilger, the election crimes head, resigned.

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: Look, I think it's a dangerous and transparent effort to give credence and to countenance some of the fanciful claims, really fanciful, that we have heard from the president, his lawyers, and his allies.

Look, it is one thing to go down to Four Seasons Total Landscaping and make a bunch of nonsense claims. It is another thing to bring the full weight of the Justice Department and its prosecutors behind you.

What he's done overnight is essentially overturned decades of guidance which says you don't disturb the ballot count. You don't look into voting irregularities until the election results have actually been certified. The Justice Department should have no role until it's been certified.

Well, now Barr is saying you can do it before it's been certified. He's saying, don't, like, go after things that aren't grounded in fact. But he's sending a signal to his prosecutors, and he's certainly sending a signal to the president that's been banging a drum about all of this election fraud with literally no evidence in court. Literally no evidence. So much so that almost every judge has said there is nothing to see here.

CAMEROTA: Elie, ever since Bill Barr gave that misleading statement about the Mueller report, the feeling among, I think, some in your field was that he's been caught, hook, line, sinker.

And so here we are yet again. He is trying to pacify, I guess, at best, the president, and it is delaying the certification. And so what -- what does this mean? What happens now?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Alisyn. I have to confess, I thought that Bill Barr had already dragged DOJ to rock bottom. Now we found a new low.

And I just want to make sure people understand this. I worked at DOJ for eight years. This is not normal. This is dangerous. DOJ -- as a DOJ alum, it's painful to watch this. And I know that other DOJ alums out there feel the exact same.

This policy, like Laura has said, this has been in place for decades. And the purpose couldn't be more simple. Keep prosecution out of politics. Keep politics out of prosecution.

[06:20:09]

Prosecution is one of the most powerful authorities that our government has. You have the ability to take away someone's liberty. And everyone at the Justice Department does or should recognize that has no place in politics.

These resignations, by the way, these resignations are completely abnormal. In the eight years I worked there under both parties, two Republican A.G.s, one Democratic A.G., this never came up. The concept of prosecutors resigning off a case, it wasn't even a thing.

And now with tonight -- with yesterday's resignation, we've seen seven dedicated career nonpartisan prosecutors resign off of four different cases. Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, the Durham investigation and now this. That is not normal. And the reason they all resigned is because they are protesting Bill Barr's political weaponization of the Justice Department.

BERMAN: Going to read a line out of the memo here. This is P-108. Barr writes, "While most allegations of purported election misconduct are of such a scale that they would not impact the outcome of an election and thus, investigation can be appropriately deferred, that is not always the case."

Laura, the reason I read that is this memo's sort of littered with these hedges and out clauses, much like Mitch McConnell's statement was littered with hedges and out clauses. Oh, the courts will decide this. We'll move on.

One of the things that people seem to be betting on is that this will work itself out. They're backing the president now, because they want him to -- to throw him a bone. They don't want to upset the Georgia runoff elections. But it will work itself out.

But how do we know that? When will it work itself out? When will it stop enough for the GSA, the General Services Administration head, Emily Murphy, to say, OK, Joe Biden, you can have that money? It's no longer clear to me that there's a singular event that turns this switch off.

JARRETT: Well, the courts are the only, really, guardrail left, to Alisyn's point. The other guardrail is the norms. They've all come down. And the courts are really the only one to stop this at some point.

You know, the election results are going to be certified. That's not in dispute. But they can put out these, you know, sort of frivolous claims now to try to delay things as best as they can. But so far, the courts aren't going for it.

But to McConnell, to say to let this play out in the courts, as if that doesn't have any consequence to the public confidence in this result, it fuels the same type of misinformation and disinformation that we're seeing on FOX, that we're seeing when people actually go talk to voters like Donie O'Sullivan went on the ground and talked to voters. And they're repeating the same misinformation and talking points that we're hearing on a daily basis.

So for him to say to let it all play out, isn't benign. To let it all play out while the house is burning on fire is not -- is not OK.

CAMEROTA: I mean, just to be clear so everybody understands, when you go to talk to the people who know the, you know, Michigan secretary of state, the Wisconsin state elections commission, the Nevada attorney general, the people on the ground, they say, We have no evidence of widespread --

JARRETT: Right.

CAMEROTA: -- any kind of.

BERMAN: The lieutenant governor of Georgia on this show yesterday, a Republican who would have every reason to say, I've seen it everywhere, said, Nope. Haven't found a thing.

CAMEROTA: So Elie, what can team Biden do now?

HONIG: Yes. So, look, first of all, this is all about the narrative. There's no question about it. Right? Bill Barr has been trying to prop up this phony narrative of mass voter fraud for months now. He's made all sorts of public proclamations that have gone nowhere. This is just the latest piece of that.

And if you don't think it matters, look at yesterday's court filing in Pennsylvania. They specifically referred to an announcement Bill Barr made about six weeks ago about this Pennsylvania case involving nine ballots that went missing. Turned out to be false. No crime involved whatsoever. Guess what? It made its way into a Trump campaign court filing yesterday as proof. That is not proof. That is fabrication.

Yesterday's announcement, it took Rudy Giuliani about an hour to start trumpeting it as some kind of proof. This is not facts. This is not proof.

Look, what can the Biden team do now? Look, to some extent, they are reliant on the norms, as you said, and reliant on just good -- good people and good government to do the right thing. Unfortunately, I don't think Bill Barr has shown any ability or willingness to do that.

JARRETT: But it's not up to him, right, Elie? Actually, the prosecutors on the ground are going to be the ones --

HONIG: Yes.

JARRETT: -- that have to uphold the integrity of the Justice Department and say, You can put out whatever memo you want, but we're the ones that bring the cases; and we don't see any "there" there.

CAMEROTA: We know there are still --

HONIG: A hundred percent.

CAMEROTA: -- good people. We know there are still good people in government and good people in the courts, and we are relying on them to do the right things.

Laura, Elie, thank you both very much for all of your expertise --

HONIG: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: -- with this. Now to coronavirus. Cases and hospitalizations are rising again across

the country. Doctor Anthony Fauci shares his thoughts on how soon a vaccine will be ready for us. We have all the latest on the pandemic for you, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:29:13]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FAUCI: You have to go through the hoops in making sure all the "i's" are dotted and the "t's" are crossed about the safety and the regulatory aspects of it. But we would be giving vaccine to people, very likely, before the end of this year. That is good news.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Wow! That's Dr. Anthony Fauci with a time line that we hadn't heard before. He was weighing in on the promising early results from Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine after the drug maker announced that preliminary results showed that it is more than 90 percent effective.

Overnight, more than 111,000 new cases hit America. That's the fifth highest day on record. And more than 59,000 hospitalizations. That's also near record levels.

So joining us now is Dr. Paul Offit. He's a pediatrics professor and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He's also a member of the FDA's Vaccine Advisory Committee.

So Dr. Offit, you're the perfect person to talk to.