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U.K. Approves Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine; Source: Trump Discussing Preemptively Pardoning His Children, Kushner & Giuliani; Justice Department Investigating Potential Bribery Scheme for Pardon; Attorney General: No Evidence of Widespread Election Fraud. Aired 6- 6:30a ET

Aired December 02, 2020 - 06:00   ET

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

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[05:59:27]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Wednesday, December 2, 6 a.m. here in New York. Alisyn is off. Erica Hill with me this morning.

Great to see you.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning.

BERMAN: We do have breaking news. Just a short time ago, the United Kingdom became the first country in the world to grant emergency approval for Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine. Immunizations will start there next week for people when need it most.

The United States could be just days away, as well. The FDA meets next week to take action. We have new information this morning on who will get the vaccine first here. Plans approved overnight for frontline workers and for nursing homes.

At this moment, the pandemic is at its worst stage. Record hospitalizations overnight, and nearly 2,600 deaths reported. That's the second highest day since the pandemic began.

HILL: There is also a flurry of breaking news coming out of the White House. CNN has learned that in the past month, President Trump has discussed preemptive pardons for several people close to him, including his children, his son-in-law, and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

Now, that's in addition to potentially pardoning himself. Plus unsealed court records reveal the Justice Department is investigating a potential crime related to the funneling of money into the White House or a related political committee in exchange for presidential pardons.

We begin, though, with Max Foster. He is live in London with this breaking vaccine news.

Max, good morning.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Huge excitement, I have to say, Erica and John, here. This will be the first country in the world, according to the British government, to have a clinically proven vaccine.

A rollout will start in a matter of days. So 800,000 doses initially, coming from the Pfizer factory in Belgium over here to the U.K. That's the first big challenge here, because this vaccine has to be carried at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit. So Pfizer have developed these special boxes, these containers with dry ice in them. We're going the see if that works all the way over from Belgium to the U.K.

Once they're here, they'll initially go to hospitals, and there's a plan of action here to prioritize the people that need the vaccination most. So initially, it will be residents and workers of care homes, frontline health and social workers, and also people over the age of 80. And then it will gradually be broadened out to the rest of the nations here in the United Kingdom.

A huge amount of excitement, but also the government tried to temper expectations a bit, because they say this is going to be a six-month process. There's huge risk still out there. So, actually, once we come out of national lockdown, we're going to enter a system of regional lockdowns. Many of them are even stricter right now.

So the message is still to keep that social distancing in place, wearing masks, being as safe as possible. They're worried about people relaxing too much at this point, I have to say.

HILL: Yes, I don't -- I don't think they're alone in those concerns, Max. Thank you.

Joining us now, CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner. He's a professor of medicine at George Washington University. And CNN political commentator, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. He's an epidemiologist and Detroit's former health director.

Good morning to the both of you. I mean, this news to wake up to it overnight, Dr. Reiner, is really something.

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: I think it's spectacular news. And it's coming soon to the United States.

It bears mentioning that drugs and therapeutics and devices are often approved first in -- in Europe and then come to the United States after often a longer review. What's different this time is that the FDA is meeting to review the voluminous data from Pfizer next week.

And it takes a long time to do this. When you submit an application for a new drug like this or even an EUA like this, there are thousands of pages of documents that have to be reviewed, statistical analyses reviewed, methods reviewed, manufacturing processes, data. So there's a lot to go through. And it has to be done right. We're giving this vaccine to 300 million healthy people, as opposed to

an EUA for a therapeutic in a sick or dying person. We're giving this drug to healthy people. It has to be done right. The FDA is doing it right.

BERMAN: Dr. El-Sayed, what do you think U.S. regulators and officials will watch? The U.K. is about eight days, honestly, eight days ahead at this point of where the U.S. will be. So what will the U.S. watch over the next eight days?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I'll tell you, regulators are in the thick of doing exactly those analysis that Dr. Reiner suggested. And so, I do think that, given the nature of what they're looking at, they're just focused on analyzing the data and assessing what -- what they find from Pfizer and BioNTech.

I will say, though, that this is pretty good news, because what it tells us is that another set of regulators who have been independently reviewing the evidence suggest that it's time to -- to deploy this vaccine, suggesting that when the U.S. regulators take a look at the FDA, that they're not going to find anything different than their partners out in the U.K. looked at.

Now, one thing I do want to focus on is the challenge, the logistical challenge of deploying the vaccine. One of the things that the U.K. has is the National Health Service, a very centralized healthcare system, which is very different than what we have here, which is a much more patchwork system.

And so some of the logistical conditions in the U.K. may mean that they're faster at deployment, and people know exactly where to go to get their vaccine versus here in the U.S., where there are a number of logistical challenges that are a little bit harder to address than there are in our partners across the Atlantic.

[06:05:05]

HILL: Dr. Reiner, that's such an interesting point. And it's not just about those freezers that we've talked so much about and the fact that this needs to be stored at such a cold temperature, this particular vaccine. But it's also getting it out there.

We know that Walgreen's and CVS are going to be working with the nursing homes, as we've learned this week. Hospitals are preparing. But how much of a concern is that for you this morning, those logistics operations?

REINER: We'll work them out. Now, the U.S. will probably get initially from Pfizer somewhere between 6 and 7 million doses.

There are many more hospital workers, nursing home workers, and nursing home patients in the United States than that number. So not everyone who would fulfill the criteria for a 1A administration will receive it.

My guess is that the vast majority of the initial doses of this drug will be given via hospitals to hospital workers and in nursing homes to their workers. So we'll learn a lot from -- from those initial experiences. Then over the next several weeks, as the shipments come in.

And as we broaden out the groups of patients and population that receive the vaccine, we'll learn what works; and we'll also learn, I'm sure, what doesn't work. This will be a work in progress over the next several months.

What's key is to get this right and to instill confidence in the public that this vaccine is safe and effective. And early impressions are important. Let's get this right at the outset.

BERMAN: Dr. El-Sayed, what kind of pressure does this put on the FDA in the United States, to look across the Atlantic and see that the United Kingdom is doing this. I'm sure President Trump is waking up this morning saying, Hey, you know, how can we let Europe beat us, even though I'm not sure that's the right framing here. But does this pressure put pressure on the United States?

EL-SAYED: I'll be honest. Hopefully -- hopefully no pressure. Because what we need here is a science-driven process. Not a politics-driven process. And this is not a competition. This is about getting it right.

And I think Dr. Reiner's point about making sure that this is a process that instills confidence is the most important thing. Because as we've talked about multiple times. There's a difference between having the vaccine and having a vaccination. You've got to get vaccines into people's arms for them to be effective.

And anything that would shed any sort of doubt on the part of the American public on the scientific rigor of this vaccine reduces the probability that people are going to take it.

And so my hope is that the good folks at the FDA -- these are folks who have been doing this their entire careers -- are committed to the science. They're not paying attention to what's happening in the U.K. They're focused on giving this vaccine and any other vaccine that comes before them a rigorous review, to make sure that it is safe and effective for the public. And then to focus on the broader questions of getting it out there through an EUA.

And so this is not a competition. This is not a political battle. This is about a rigorous review of the science. And I'm confident that the folks at the FDA are focusing only on the science to make sure this is safe and effective for us.

HILL: In terms of talking about the science. That was a lot of the focus of this CDC advisory meeting that happened yesterday, where they recommended, as expected, that frontline healthcare workers and residents and nursing homes receive the first doses.

But, you know, in listening to that yesterday, that was the questioning. That was the point. It was all about, is this safe and effective enough, especially for those nursing home residents? And there was some concern from one of the members of that panel. The only person to say "no," Dr. Reiner, about whether there had been enough testing in residents of nursing homes. What should we take away from that?

REINER: We should take away from that that the panel was doing their job and not rubber-stamping a preconceived notion of who should get the vaccine first.

We do have data on giving this vaccine to older -- older people. It's true that there is very limited information on the exact nursing home population. But that population, we know with certainty, is the greatest at risk in the United States. Fully 40 percent of the deaths from this pandemic in the United States have come in nursing homes. So it's crucial that we get the vaccine to that population.

And I'll add that, as we expand this, we should be vaccinating, very quickly, incarcerated people in the United States. This virus has burned through prisons, as well.

So we will move to these special populations as quickly as the vaccine is available. But everyone agrees that first responders, hospital personal, EMS, should receive this vaccine. Because these are the folks that are going to be managing the pandemic in - in its hottest months of the entire crisis.

BERMAN: Dr. El-Sayed, for all the good news we've reported this morning in the U.K., approving emergency use of the vaccine is terrific news and portends what will happen here in the United States, we are at an awful stage in this pandemic, with nearly 99,000 hospitalizations reported overnight. That's a record. Every reason to think that we're going to crash through 100,000 hospitalized tomorrow, probably.

[06:10:18]

The second highest number of deaths reported in a single day. This is a tough stretch that we're in right now. And I continue to be concerned, as we look at the hospitalizations, that it could get much worse before it gets better. What do you see?

EL-SAYED: Yes, no, I see the same thing, unfortunately. We see this blip in reporting over the last couple of days.

But hospitalizations are the number that you really are looking at. They're the -- they're the connective tissue between case transmission and death.

And watching, as our hospitals fill up, watching as you've got hospitals, frankly, all over the country that are really, really struggling under the weight and the burden of people ill with this disease, I worry a lot about what the next couple of months look like.

And I just want to say this again. When the history of this pandemic is written, it will not have been about what happened over the spring. It will be about what happens over the next several months. And everybody has a chance to be able to rewrite that history right now.

If we are willing to wear our masks, if we are willing to forego social interactions for a short time and limit the number of people that we're engaging with. If we are regular about washing our hands, we can re-write that history even before it's written.

And it's critical that we pay attention to this. We recognize that we're in this together. Help is on the way, but we've got to do what we can right now.

BERMAN: It's up to our leaders, and it's up to all of us. That's a terrific reminder.

Dr. El-Sayed, Dr. Reiner, thanks so much, both of you, for being with us this morning.

REINER: Thank you.

BERMAN: We have a quick programming note. Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta will host a new CNN coronavirus town hall on Friday night. That's at 9 p.m. Eastern to get your vaccine questions answered. And we all have so many at this point.

HILL: Also breaking overnight, a source telling CNN President Trump has been discussing with advisers preemptive pardons for his children, his son-in-law and Rudy Giuliani. And that's not the only pardon news.

CNN's Joe Johns live at the White House this morning with more.

Joe, good morning.

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

With the president continuing to rail against the election that he plainly lost, we're not seeing anything new or meaningful in terms of policy or even advancing his legacy. But we are learning a little bit more today about what may be getting done and not getting done in the final days of the Trump administration.

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JOHNS (voice-over): As President Trump's days at the White House grow shorter, some of his associates are reportedly lining up to make appeals, hoping to receive pardons before he leaves the Oval Office.

A source familiar with the matter telling CNN that Rudy Giuliani is one of the people on the list, a claim the Trump attorney denies. A second source also says the president's three oldest children and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are seeking preemptive pardons.

These requests may be in anticipation of what some Trump allies see as hostility from President-elect Joe Biden's incoming administration, the first source tells CNN.

This as the Department of Justice is investigating whether there was a scheme to funnel money to the White House or a political committee in exchange for a presidential pardon. The potential crime disclosed in heavily-redacted court documents unsealed in federal court Tuesday. No names were revealed.

Meantime, while Trump continues efforts to reverse his election loss, the Department of Justice says there's no evidence to support his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.

Attorney General William Barr telling the Associated Press, "To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election."

Barr, a top Trump ally, making a rare rebuke of the president, even as he repeatedly echoed Trump's lies about voting by mail in September.

WILLIAM BARR, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: People trying to change the rules to this -- to this methodology, which as a matter of logic, is very open to fraud and coercion, is reckless and dangerous. And people are playing with fire.

JOHNS: And after the Trump team's false allegations that voting machines could be altered to change the election results, Barr saying, investigations by the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security have not found anything to support that.

Trump's attorneys pushing back against Barr's comments, saying they have ample evidence of illegal voting. But most states where they're pursuing lawsuits have already certified election results, including Georgia, where one official sent this emotional plea to the president and Republican lawmakers, warning their ongoing attacks on the electoral system are extremely dangerous.

GABRIEL STERLING, GEORGIA VOTING SYSTEMS IMPLEMENTATION MANAGER: It has to stop. Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language.

I need to step up and say this, is stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone's going to get hurt. Someone's going to get shot. Someone's going to get killed. And it's not right. It's not right.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: We should note that last night, the president in a tweet denied there was anything to the pardon investigation, as far as the attorney general goes. The campaign says Bill Barr simply hasn't seen the evidence of so-called fraud, but neither has anybody else.

In fact, the campaign has repeatedly made claims about it publicly and in the courts. The courts repeatedly have thrown it out -- Erica.

HILL: Yes. I was thinking the same thing. I haven't seen that evidence either. Joe, thank you.

So can a president pardon anyone even before allegations of wrongdoing are made? Well, we'll ask our legal experts, next.

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[06:20:12]

BERMAN: All right. Breaking overnight, CNN has learned that since the election, President Trump has discussed preemptive pardons for several people close to him, including his children, his son-in-law, and Rudy Giuliani.

Joining us now to discuss the slew of questions that arise from this, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig. He's a former federal prosecutor. And CNN "EARLY START" anchor, Laura Jarrett. She covered the Justice Department.

Elie, I want to start with you. On the issue of pardons, what can a president do? What can a president pardon people for? Does there have to be a specific allegation to pardon you for? Or can you just say, I pardon you for anything that might have happened in the last four years?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, John. So once again, we're about to see the legal limits pushed by President Trump.

Typically, when a president issues a pardon over our history, he pardons a specific person for a specific federal crime, only federal crimes, that that person already has been charged with or convicted of. In fact, that's what President Trump has done with his pardons thus far.

Very, very rarely but occasional in our history, a president will issue one of these preemptive pardons, where I know you've not been charged yet, but I pardon you anyway for something or everything. Most famously or infamously, when Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon.

So we don't know for sure whether that's legal or not. It's never been challenged. But I can tell you, it's only happened very, very rarely, and it is controversial and arguably not lawful.

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: But who's asking for a pardon unless you believe you are facing some serious criminal exposure? The reporting from our White House team is that Giuliani is discussing this with the president and asking for one.

Now, we don't know the full extent of what he's facing in the Southern District of New York, but we know, at least as of last summer, he was still under investigation for some of his business ties with the Ukraine.

So why is he asking for this? He hasn't been charged with anything. We haven't seen any indictment on anything. So what's going on?

BERMAN: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

HILL: It's such a -- it's such a great point. And to that point, Elie. If the president decided he wanted to try this move with Rudy Giuliani, some sort of a preemptive pardon, could the president potentially be opening himself up to some issues on his end? HONIG: Well, it depends what the reason is. And one of the things that

we've learned just overnight is that there -- there has been a DOJ investigation of some case. We don't know the players, involving an exchange of money for a pardon.

Now, it doesn't necessarily have to be money. If there's an exchange of money for a pardon, that would be bribery. That would be a crime. I don't believe that pardon would be effective.

But I believe by the same logic, if there was an exchange, perhaps, of I'll pardon you, Rudy Giuliani, if you stay quiet, I think that's obstruction of justice, if that's the case. Also, would be a crime, and the pardon would not be effective.

BERMAN: Pardons have been investigated. It's not like it hasn't happened. The Marc Rich pardon Bill Clinton did just before he left office was investigated. I guess James Comey, by the way, was the one who investigated it. And that could be uncomfortable. So that's something that the president would need to think about.

Laura Jarrett, to you. Again, when we look at the names here of the people that the president is considering pardoning, it's his children.

JARRETT: Yes.

BERMAN: And Rudy Giuliani there. You brought up Rudy Giuliani, who apparently is lobbying for a pardon. We do know there has been a federal investigation there into him.

Don Jr.'s name came up in the Mueller probe. But as far as we know, Ivanka Trump, for instance, her name isn't necessarily connected to any direct federal probe here. So why, again, would she need a pardon?

JARRETT: Well, look, the pardon power is broad. I think any lawyer would agree on that.

And if you're the president and you're worried that Joe Biden's Justice Department may have something to look into, you're going to try to protect your children. You can understand that.

But here's the thing. He cannot protect against state prosecutions. And we know that the Manhattan district attorney's office, the attorney general in New York, is looking into a variety of tax-related issues. We don't have any reason to believe any of these people are involved. We don't know the scope of it.

But he can't protect against that. And so what maybe, possibly, he is trying to do is at least shield against anything that could be going on at the federal level.

HILL: When we look, Elie, at this new pardon investigation that we learned about overnight, that the DOJ is looking into. The fact that this involves communications between lawyers and clients. That's a big deal.

HONIG: Yes, it shows that this is not just some rogue actor out there. This is some sort of coordinated effort. Look, we don't know who the person is who was trying to get this pardon. The names are all redacted out of the court documents we saw.

We also, I guess, in some sense, don't know where that money was headed. But if you break it down, there's only one human being in this country who has the lawful power to grant a pardon. And so I think there's a logical conclusion here. What -- how much the president knew or didn't know, I think, is to be determined.

[06:25:05]

But the target, the subject of that effort to essentially buy a pardon, which is just a wild abuse of power and crime, the person who that was aimed for can only really be one person.

BERMAN: Let me just read you what Judge Beryl Howell wrote, the chief judge of the district court, and that's how we now know about this investigation. This was writing from August.

"A bribery conspiracy theme in which" -- redacted, name redacted there -- "would offer a substantial political contribution in exchange for a presidential pardon or reprieve of sentence for" -- redacted -- "using" -- redacted -- "as intermediaries to deliver the proposed bribe. ('Bribery-for-pardon scheme'.)"

Even though there's names redacted there, Laura, there's a lot going on in that statement.

JARRETT: There is. And, you know, it's interesting. As Elie put it, the bar for getting attorney/client privilege -- arguably, attorney/client privileged information is so high within the Justice Department. There's a whole host of sign-offs that you have to get.

Remember with Michael Cohen, all of the hoops that DOJ had to jump through to get his phone and text messages. It's a big deal, what's going on there. And that this was only unsealed recently. But as you mentioned, it goes back to August.

Now, I find it most interesting that the Justice Department decided to put out a statement last night that mentioned that no government official, no current government official is a target or subject of the investigation, at least trying to bat down some of the guesswork there.

HILL: Yes. I do want to get your -- both of your take on this. What we learned in this interview with Attorney General William Barr. One of the things that really stood out, of course, is that he has appointed John Durham as special counsel. That happened all the way back in October. We're just finding out about it now, Elie.

He said he didn't want to interfere with the 2020 election, which is somewhat suspect, given other comments that he made running up to the election and misinformation that was put out about voting, for example.

What -- what, though, does this tell you about the real focus of this investigation and the real plan for putting him in that position?

HONIG: Yes, so first of all, for any viewers thinking, am I going crazy? Didn't this happen a year and a half ago? Essentially, yes. Bill Barr put John Durham on this case in the middle of 2019. Only now we learned that just two months ago, right before the election, Barr gave Durham this official designation as special counsel.

The meaning of this, basically, is this is what prosecutors call a case dump. This is a dud. This case did not turn up what Donald Trump was overtly hoping for, an October surprise. It's not going to yield those big names that Trump and his supporters had in their fever dreams.

And what Bill Barr has done now, by announcing that he's made Durham officially special counsel, is essentially ensure that John Durham will become the problem of the next administration.

I do find it really unusual and really suspicious that he did this before the election, but we're only finding out about it now, because I think it underscores this whole idea that Durham was a dud. He did not produce what the president was hoping for.

BERMAN: Laura, I wanted your take here. I also just want to add, before your take, that in this A.P. interview, Barr also dropped the bombshell that the Department of Justice has found no evidence of widespread fraud in the election. And there's nothing to substantiate, he says, some of the president's most outrageous claims.

JARRETT: Yes, and I think that it gives it that cover. Obviously, that coming in the same interview.

But, look, you have the president's allies, like Lindsey Graham, focusing on the Durham part of what he said in that interview and not the part where he said there was no widespread fraud. I think that's notable.

And to leave this for the Biden administration, I think is cold comfort for those on the right, the president's allies, who have been foaming at the mouth about Durham for months now. They wanted to see something before the election. They admitted that on background to many reporters.

And so for the attorney general to do this now, I don't think gets him anywhere. He may want to saddle the Biden administration with this and so that they can't fire Durham, but that's not what the president wanted.

BERMAN: Laura Jarrett, Elie Honig, thank you so much. This was so helpful that you threw this barrage of breaking news overnight. Really appreciate it.

HONIG: Thanks, John.

HILL: Well, help is on the way. That is a message from President-elect Joe Biden to millions of Americans desperate for economic relief. That's one message, but what's the reality on Capitol Hill? We'll dig into that, next.

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