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U.K. Approves Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine for Use Starting Next Week; Source says, Trump discussing preemptively pardoning his children, Kushner and Giuliani; Justice Department Investigating Potential Bribery Scheme for Pardon. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired December 02, 2020 - 07:00   ET

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

ERICA HILL, CNN NEW DAY: Starring in the Netflix series, The Umbrella Academy.

[07:00:02]

And I will say an overwhelming support that you saw on social media for Elliot Page for those statements, who also recognize that the transgender community is under attack on a daily basis, and that too must be recognized even in his moment of joy being able to have this moment.

New Day continues right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day. Alisyn off this morning, Erica Hill with me, nice to see you.

HILL: Quiet morning.

BERMAN: The breaking news is this. Just a few hours ago, the United Kingdom became the first country to grant emergency approval for Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine. Immunizations will start there next week for the people who need it most. Now, the U.S. could be just days behind. The FDA meets next week to take action.

Obviously, the news from the United Kingdom is a big development that raises major questions here. What does this tell us about the efficacy and the safety of the vaccine? What can we learn in the short-term from the United Kingdom? Why did they go first? What does the president think of that?

We have new information this morning on who in the U.S. will get the vaccine first. Plans approved overnight for frontline workers and nursing homes.

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

HILL: There is also a lot of breaking news out of the White House this morning. CNN has learned in the past month, President Trump has discussed preemptive pardons for several people close to him, including his own children, his son-in-law and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Now, this is in addition to potentially pardoning himself.

We're also learning unsealed court records reveal that the Justice Department is investigating a potential crime related to the funneling of money into the White House or related political committee in exchange for presidential pardons. We will get to all of it.

We want to begin though with Max Foster on this breaking news out of London. Max, good morning.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Erica, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, has just left Downing Street with a spring in his step. He's about to address parliament in this huge moment. This morning, the British regulator, the equivalent of the FDA, the MHRA, announced that not only is the Pfizer vaccine 95 percent effective, it's also safe.

Let's hear from the head of that group.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JUNE RAINE, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, MHRA: This vaccine has only been approved because those strict tests have been done and complied with. And everyone can be absolutely confident that no corners whatsoever have been cut.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Boris Johnson, as you can see, speaking to this. We'll bring you the highlights of that speech as they come through.

But the regulator here described how they were able to carry out all sorts of tests on this new vaccine in parallel to each other, as opposed to one after the other, which led to this extraordinary moment where a drug has gone from concept to reality in just ten months, when it would normally take ten years.

So now, we have a situation where Boris Johnson has confirmed the rollout of this vaccine will start next week. 800,000 doses made in Belgium at the Pfizer factory on their way over here to the United Kingdom, a very delicate operation, though Pfizer says it is ready. They've created these special containers that keep the doses at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit, which is vital to keep this drug safe.

Once it gets to the United Kingdom, it will be taken into key hospitals, and then the injections will begin, starting off with people in care homes and their carers, and then frontline health care staff, also people over the age of 80. They've drawn a list of who gets the vaccine first.

But this will be a six-month process to get the nation vaccinated, so they're very much warning everyone in the United Kingdom not to get too excited, but to stick to those safety rules at least for now.

HILL: Yes, now is certainly not the time to let down your guard when you know that it is so close at hand. Max Foster, thank you.

Meantime, here at home, CNN has learned the first shipments of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine are set to be delivered in two weeks, and the CDC's vaccine advisers have also recommended who should get those first doses here in the United States.

CNN's Sara Murray live in Washington this morning. So, Sara, fill us in more on this recommendation from that advisory panel at the CDC.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So, look, this is going to be a huge logistical challenge ahead. And here is what we know. We know that the CDC has recommended that health care workers be at the front of the line, and we know that it could be as soon as December 15th, pending FDA authorization, that these start to get shipped out. So they go out within 24 hours from Pfizer. And then it's really up to states to get them into the arms of these frontline health care workers.

We know that even in this first initial round, there aren't going to be enough doses, even to do all of these frontline health care workers.

[07:05:01]

And so states have already thought about, how do you prioritize within those priority groups? For instance, if you're a health care worker who is working every day with COVID-19 patients, you are probably going to be at the front of that line.

Now, the federal government has really taken this sort of 10,000-foot management view on this. They're talking to states about what they might need. You know, do you have enough cold storage? These Pfizer vaccines need to be kept in ultra-cold freezers. And if not, do you have enough dry ice? The federal government is helping states acquire enough dry ice so that they can keep these vaccines cold. But a lot of this really does fall to states.

And one of the things that we're hearing that folks are really worried about in these states is making sure that people actually come back, not just for the first dose, but for the second.

Obviously, less of a concern with health care workers, who most of these states expect will be very eager to get the vaccine and also very responsible in terms of getting both doses. But states are saying they need more money from the federal government in order to make sure that they're appropriately tracking everyone who comes in for vaccine number one, and then following up with them, encouraging them to come get vaccine number two. No state wants to waste any of this vaccine, because that will also impact how many doses they could get from the federal government in the future.

HILL: Great points.

BERMAN: All right. Sara Murray, thank you so much.

Obviously, a ton to discuss. Joining us now, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, great to see you.

Let's start with this news out of the United Kingdom. The significance of that country granting emergency use approval to the Pfizer vaccine, the significance, why are they a week ahead of the United States? Is that even the right framing?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, yes. I think that's going to be something that a lot of people ask about. So I think it's a very fair question. I mean, the data -- the data from Pfizer was received by this regulatory authority, MHRA, just a couple of days after the FDA received their data. So it's really a question of how quickly do you analyze this data, and we know, you know, this regulatory authority in Britain typically does tend to move pretty quickly, quicker than the United States.

Things often do get approved in Europe and specifically the U.K. faster than they do in the United States, and that's always the subject of some debate, how much do you rely on the company's own data, how much of your own analysis do you do, do you start from scratch and verify all the methods, look at the raw data yourself? I'm not -- I was talking to some folks early this morning about exactly what the process was in the U.K. But, look, it's a good process. I think it's really good that there were no big red flags that jumped out.

Keep in mind, the only folks that have really seen this data up until now have been the company. That's all -- when we hear the 95 percent number, we're hearing that from the company. So now, this is evidence that there is another body, regulatory authority, that says, hey, we've looked at this, we feel confident to go ahead and move forward.

So it's a huge move. And I think it really does telegraph that we're going to see that in other places, including here in the United States with the FDA, but also the rest of the European Union in pretty short order. I mean, people have said by the middle of this month, that still seems to be what's on track.

HILL: it was noteworthy too that out of the U.K., they went out of their way to say, look, this authorization meets international standards.

GUPTA: Right. Yes, I mean, because that is the question. And already, there is -- as I was on a call this morning with a few different folks, that is already a little bit of a subject of a debate. Were any corners cut? And, again, I don't think -- I'm not suggesting that and I don't think anyone is suggesting that, but this did move quickly. And, again, is there an increased reliance on the company's data. How much did you start from scratch?

But I don't think anyone necessarily that I was talking to this morning suggested that it did not meet international standards. It just moved fast. And it's probably going to be, again, a signal of what we see here in the United States.

So, overall, I think what we're seeing in the U.K. is good news now for the rest of the world, because it's likely that those types of approvals are going to start happening all over the place.

BERMAN: Yes, maybe next week. I mean, in the United States, it's coming very quickly here. So I don't think people should get overly anxious that it's there, but not here yet.

Something did happen overnight here in the United States, which is the CDC advisory panel put together guidelines for who gets the vaccine first. And as expected, the frontline medical workers come first, also people in nursing homes.

When it comes to frontline medical workers, Sanjay, what does that mean, exactly? And I suppose it's not just medical workers, it's people who work in these medical settings, I suppose is a better way of saying it. But what does it mean? Who specifically does that cover?

GUPTA: Yes. This is a really important point. And some of this -- Sara Murray just sort of alluded to this, but this may come down to not just the states making these triage decisions in terms of who's getting the vaccine first, but even individual institutions, hospitals, for example, exactly as you're saying.

For example, I'm a neurosurgeon.

[07:10:00]

There have been times when I have taken care of patients who have COVID, but that's not the primary purpose they're coming to see me. They're diagnosed with COVID after coming to the hospital.

For doctors, nurses, staff who are taking care of COVID patients on a regular basis, they're likely to be first in line, because they're most at risk. It makes sense. And, obviously, in the beginning, there's not going to be enough.

You saw the numbers here. We're talking perhaps on a rolling basis, 40 million or so doses if this all goes well, available by the end of the year. That's 20 million people. There are 21 million health care workers alone. So, obviously, there's going need to be triage done.

On top of that, you have some 3 million long-term care facility residents and staff that will also be at the front of the line.

So there will be some triage decisions made. There are some states that may focus more on nursing home staff and residents, because they have more of those types of patients and people. So it's going to vary from state to state and we're going to sort of track that and see how that's going.

I should also point out, with regard to the authorizations, the vaccine is already pre-purchased right? So these authorizations shouldn't affect where the vaccine is going. We know how much is likely to be available in the United States versus the U.K., versus other places around the world.

HILL: Yes. And we've started to hear too from states and even hospitals about what they're preparing for in terms of doses that they expect to get.

As we look at all of this, it is such great news and it's so great to focus on that light at the end of the tunnel, but we can't ignore the reality of the situation that we're in, the staggering number of deaths reported overnight in this country.

This open letter from the American Medical Association, the Nurse's Association, the Hospital Association, pleading with Americans to stay vigilant in the weeks and months ahead.

As you look at these two moments, it is more important now than ever that we keep doing what we're doing, Sanjay.

GUPTA: Yes. You know, this has been the thing. And I think for now, a few weeks, a few months, really, this anticipation of this very good news regarding vaccines, at the same time as very, very awful news in terms of where the numbers are.

That's what people are hearing. They're hearing both of these at the same time. Some people will say, well, the vaccines are coming, therefore, you know, we're done. This is over. It's not.

And there's just a pragmatic nature to this. I mean, we talk about the vaccine going to health care workers and long-term care facilities. Those are institutions that may be able to accommodate and administer distribute the vaccine more quickly.

For everybody else, this process is going to take a while, in part just because the vaccine is being manufactured and distributed sort of at the same time. Usually, you have a huge stock supply and you can surge demand quickly. That's not the case here. This is happening real-time.

And as a result, most people really aren't going to be able to get to the vaccine until late spring/early summer. And even then, there's going to be a period of time where you're still building up that herd immunity in this country.

These are all terms and strategies that people have heard now for the next several months. It's starting to unfold, but it's still going to take time and there are so many lives that can still be saved in the interim without a vaccine, without any new therapeutic.

We hear this all the time, but 100,000 lives could still be saved if people were diligent about simply masking, avoiding large public gatherings and avoiding being in indoor, clustered sort of locations. Just those three things, if we did those for the next few months, even aside from the vaccine, would make monumental a difference. We have evidence to suggest that to be the case.

BERMAN: It's important, Sanjay, because the deaths reported overnight and the hospital figures, nearly 99,000, and that's grim. That's grim and continued to be head in the wrong direction this morning.

Much more with you coming up, thanks so much for being with us, Sanjay. GUPTA: Okay.

BERMAN: A quick programming note. Anderson Cooper and Sanjay will host a new CNN coronavirus town hall on friday night. Tune in at 9:00 P.M. Eastern to get your vaccine questions answered.

So, sources tell CNN that President Trump is discussing preemptive pardons for his children, his son-in-law and Rudy Giuliani. Maggie Haberman reports that Giuliani has been lobbying for a pardon. She joins us next.

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[07:15:00]

HILL: Breaking overnight, a source tells CNN that since the election, 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.

Joining us now, CNN Political Analyst Maggie Haberman, who broke the story last night in The New York Times last night. Maggie, good morning.

So, I guess in some of it, you think, okay, that's not entirely surprising, but it really is in a lot of ways because there are not really allegations of crimes for, right, his children, so why these preemptive pardons, if we start first with his kids?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: If we start with his kids, Erica, we're not clear whether there's some specific thing he's worried about. what we understand, Mike Schmidt and I, from our reporting, is that the president is worried, and he has been for many, many weeks. He has talked about his fear of the prosecutors if he lost the election were going to come aggressively, not just at him, but at his children. And so he believes that there is a chance that there will be some effort for some kind of retaliatory prosecution by the Biden justice department.

It's not clear that he's worried about one specific thing. We do know that there have obviously been investigations that have touched on his family over time. There're certainly state investigations into aspects of his own business that could impact his children. Those are state prosecutions. It's not like a federal preemptive pardon would do much. And it's not clear that a federal preemptive pardon is going to have much legal standing. But that is what's on his mind right now, as he's heading into the final stages here.

BERMAN: That's the kids. Now, Rudy Giuliani is a different matter. What exactly is Rudy Giuliani asking for?

HABERMAN: So we should note, number one, we know they discussed it. It's not clear whether Giuliani brought it up, not clear whether Trump suggested it.

[07:20:02] Giuliani, we should note, despite ignoring our requests for comment and despite his own advisers not denying this is now denying it on Twitter, just to give him his say.

But in our reporting in the past week and other times, Giuliani has discussed some kind of preemptive pardon with the president. Again, we don't know specifically what he is worried about. What he could be worried about is the fact that there has been a Southern District of New York investigation into former business associates, Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, of Rudy Giuliani, and there had been, I believe to be, at least some investigators looking at Giuliani in that context.

Whether there's more, we have no way of knowing that right now. Whether there's something that went dormant under the Trump years, we have no way of knowing that.

But the concern is somewhat similar with Giuliani, John, which is that under a Biden administration, something will be getting a different look, and as it relates to the former mayor. But it sets up this very unusual situation where you have the lawyer for the president, you know, said to be in this kind of a conversation, it's unusual.

BERMAN: Yes, in other words, it's a hell of a thing. I was just going to say, it's a hell of a thing when you have the guy who's asking for $20,000 a day to argue --

HABERMAN: Which he also denied and which was in writing, we should just make that point.

BERMAN: Exactly. But he's out there asking for $20,000 a day to argue that the president can overturn the election results. I mean, he's out there arguing for the election to be overturned and asking the president for a pardon at the same time. It creates this just incredible reasoning loop. It's hard to get your arms around.

HABERMAN: Yes. I mean, look, we've seen this repeatedly with Giuliani, as you know, over the last couple of years. He was one of the people who represented Mueller during the impeachment investigation. But that was after an impeachment investigation. Excuse me, he didn't represent the president during the impeachment investigation, he represented the president during the Mueller investigation, where he did help to push public opinion to some extent. It was not a huge dial but a couple of ticks in the president's favor and away from Mueller.

On impeachment, he helped kick off the impeachment battle, because he was so convinced that he was going to find evidence of corruption involving the Bidens and that ended up ensnaring the president. And yet, every single time, Rudy Giuliani is who the president turns to when he is having a problems and we are seeing it again now in the campaign.

HILL: It is remarkable how consistent that playbook is in many ways.

Speaking of pardons, any new rumblings, any new reporting on the president considering a self-pardon this morning, Maggie? HABERMAN: We know that it came up in the context, and ABC News has some reporting on this, about whether he could pardon himself during impeachment, when they were looking at all kinds of different scenarios. Mike and I do not have reporting that this has come up again more recently, but there are people close to the president who think that it will likely become a discussion in the couple of weeks.

Again, whether he does any of this, Erica, is a big open question, as is, you know, many of the questions related to this president's final weeks in office. But it is certainly something that has been around the White House and I think will continue. Pardons are going to be a big story across the board, whether it's these or something else over the next six weeks.

BERMAN: No question. Look, if Sean Hannity is talking about these preemptive pardons, you know that it's out there being widely considered, perhaps even inevitable.

And I have to say, it's happening at the same time that there's this remarkable release of information yesterday that a federal district judge in Washington, D.C. more or less asked the DOJ to investigate and DOJ did investigate an alleged pardon conspiracy.

Let me read you what Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for D.C. wrote. A bribery scheme in which, redacted, 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.

So a bribery for pardon scheme there, Maggie, what's your sense there? What's the -- I know Michael Schmidt has the by line on this, but what's The Times reporting on this?

HABERMAN: I mean, we have what you have, which is court papers that are pretty explosive in terms of what they're alleging and tantalizing in that we have no idea who's behind the redacted names, but it is all coming together again to underscore what we just said, which is that the pardons are going to be a huge story going forward.

The president, John, tweeted last night, I think, just before midnight, this is a fake news story. He didn't specifically talk about this. It appeared to be what he was talking about. This is coming from his own Justice Department.

Now, we have no idea given that it was unsealed, whether this is still an active case, whether this is something that is still an ongoing investigation. But, again, it's just a pretty remarkable and naked allegation of a pay-to-play scheme.

[07:25:05]

HILL: It really is.

We also learned a fair amount from this interview with Attorney General Barr by the A.P., not just that he admitted that there -- you know, there's nothing that's going to overturn this election, the facts are the facts, they are what they are, which, of course, he was immediately catching some blowback for from a number of supporters of the president, but he also noted that back in October, he had made John Durham Special Counsel, which keeps him in place, which is an important part of this story.

HABERMAN: Absolutely. Look, it codifies, at least for a time, the existence of a prosecutor looking into the thing the president has been the most concerned about, which is whether there was impropriety involved in the origins of the investigation into possible conspiracy between Russian officials and the Trump campaign. Now, that investigation had not turned anything up that was going to result in charges before this election. We know that the president and some of his allies were very frustrated by that. So this is a way of pushing it forward.

BERMAN: We'll have to wait and see what happens with this. If it makes him more likely to issue a report, how the Biden administration handles this. I'm going to speak to --

HABERMAN: We don't know.

BERMAN: I'm sorry?

HABERMAN: I said we don't know but it is going to -- look, it is yet another way in which Donald Trump is going to create some kind of permanent route or semi-permanent route of his time in office as Biden comes in.

BERMAN: We're going to talk to Senator Angus King in a second and get a sense of what people on the other side of the aisle think of all of this.

No small thing, what else Barr said in this interview with the A.P. And it may very well be that the Durham drop of news was to sweeten it for his audience of one, the president. The other bit of news was that Barr announced that the Justice Department had not uncovered any evidence of widespread fraud that would change the results of the election and more specifically said there was nothing to substantiate this bizarre, bogus conspiracy theory the president has been fomenting on voting machines changing votes.

HABERMAN: Well, it was stunning because people had been waiting to hear from Barr on this issue. Barr has often been aligned with the president on the president's sort of pet issues. This was one where people were waiting to hear from him.

And as you, what he said was very much at odds with what the president has been saying. The president's campaign put out a statement saying, essentially, Barr doesn't know what he's talking about. And it began with the usual disclaimer from when an insult is going to follow, with all due respect, to Bill Barr.

As you say, this Durham announcement came basically at the same time as this A.P. interview and at the same time Bill Barr was at the White House yesterday for a meeting with the president's chief of staff and may have seen the president.

I do think that Barr was aware of how his comments were going to be received. The president on his Twitter feed insisted Barr was wrong. I don't think Barr is saying this is going to change the mind of the president.

And it is really breathtaking, John, how ingrained the president's conspiracy theories about the election have become in the minds of his supporters, who are talking about Barr in one case, as if he's part of the quote/unquote deep state, that they see as people against the president. There's this clear dividing line.

HILL: Yes, and how quickly that all changes, right?

HABERMAN: Exactly.

HILL: This last one, we want to get your take on. John and I are both into this last story. Our Kaitlan Collins tweeting about the Christmas parties at the White House and the president talking about four more years. He is all in, and if it's not going to be a second administration for him starting in January, he says, well, there's always 2024.

HABERMAN: So, Erica, I think he's some in. I think he's going to say that he's running. He may trigger the FEC rules, by which you have to have a campaign committee paying for your activities. He can do that and then he can just say he's suspending his campaign in three years and not actually really run and go ahead.

I think he is going to say that he is running. I think he's going to act like a candidate and do things with the appearance of being a candidate, irrelevant to raise money, to pay for activities, and to frankly be able to say that things like ongoing investigations are political, which some of his allies have said they expect him to say.

But whether he actually is on the ballot when 2024 primaries begin, I think is a real open question.

BERMAN: The exact quote last night was, we're trying to do another four years. Otherwise, I'll see you in four years.

HABERMAN: It's the big stay tuned Donald Trump reveal, right. I mean, that's what it is.

BERMAN: If you're Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz or Tom Cotton, this has got to bug you. It really does. I mean, really, you're sitting here carrying his water and he's going to block you out at least the next three years, interesting to see.

Maggie, thank you for sticking with us so long this morning, I really appreciate it.

HABERMAN: Thank you.

HILL: President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will join Jake Tapper for their first joint interview since their election victory.

[07:30:02]

It's a CNN special event. Tune in tomorrow night at 9:00 P.M., only right here on CNN.