Return to Transcripts main page

The Lead with Jake Tapper

Russian Plot; Bill Barr Rebukes Trump Over Election Claims. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired December 21, 2020 - 16:30   ET

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

[16:30:01]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILLIAM BARR, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I see no basis now for seizing machines by the federal government.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As Trump continues to stew on Twitter, he's also been speaking with allies, like former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who told the president not to attend president-elect Biden's inauguration.

STEVE BANNON, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: He is not going to back down. He will never concede.

JOHNS: Trump also soliciting Alabama senator-elect Tommy Tuberville to challenge the Electoral College vote in Congress on January 6, something Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been trying to quash.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I spoke to a great gentleman, Tommy Tuberville, last night, and he was so excited. He said: You made me the most popular politician in the United States.

JOHNS: The president praising Tuberville after the Alabama Republican said this:

TOMMY TUBERVILLE (R), ALABAMA SENATOR-ELECT: Well, you see what's coming. You have been reading it in the House.

JOHNS: Barr also threw cold water on the president's claims over the weekend that China might be responsible for the massive cyberattack on U.S. federal agencies, which has been tied to a Russian group.

BARR: I agree with Secretary Pompeo's assessment. It certainly appears to be the Russians.

JOHNS: Senator Mitt Romney warning Jake on "STATE OF THE UNION" this Russian aggression should be a wakeup call.

SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): The president has a blind spot when it comes to Russia. They have done this sort of thing before. They have done it again.

(END VIDEOTAPE) JOHNS: And one more note, Pam.

Sidney Powell, the attorney who made a reputation for herself by spreading baseless conspiracy theories about the election, was not only spotted here at the White House last night. She was also spotted here by our team today.

The personal attorney for the president, Rudy Giuliani, was spotted here, as well as concern continues about the president's mental state in the last 29 days of his administration -- back to you.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: And Sidney Powell, let's not forget, also known, built a reputation these recent error-laden court filings that she has produced in this fight against -- these baseless election claims.

All right, thanks so much, Joe Johns. We appreciate it.

Now let's discuss all of this. We have Evan Perez and Laura Barron- Lopez.

Thanks so much for being here with us.

Let's start with you, Evan, on Bill Barr.

He has been, of course, as we know -- you have been covering him -- one of President Trump's biggest defenders and allies since he joined this administration. You were in the room today, Evan, questioning Barr.

Now that Barr is on his way out, is he acting differently? It certainly seems so today.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

No, I think it is a big difference. And we have seen a reluctance by the attorney general over the last 22 months to show any kind of daylight between him and the president, no matter what the president has said, no matter how nutty some of the Twitter postings that the president has made.

The attorney general tries to figure out a way to make it true. And, today, we saw the opposite of that. We saw -- the attorney general seemed to, frankly, welcome the chance to put some distance between him and the president on the question of whether there should be a special counsel to investigate these allegations of vote fraud.

The attorney general says he -- as you just heard in Joe Johns' piece, he said, "I don't see it."

He also said he didn't see any reason to appoint a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden. And you saw his answer on the Russian hack.

What I think is most fascinating, Pamela, is the idea that on his way out, again, two more days before he leaves the building, the attorney general seems to be giving these answers as a way to sort of give some breathing room to his successor, Jeff Rosen, who's going to be the acting attorney general beginning on Wednesday, so that if there is pressure from the president in the White House to do some of these things, we already have an answer from the attorney general, from Bill Barr.

And I think it gives them a little bit of breathing room for them to be able to say no.

BROWN: Absolutely.

And, Laura, meantime, you have Sidney Powell leaving the White House residence last night. We know Trump is a fan of hers. I'm told the president wants her to embed in the White House counsel as essentially a special counsel looking at these baseless election claims.

The attorney general, as Evan just laid out, he shot down the need for one at DOJ. But that doesn't mean that Trump can make her part of the White House team, right, in his, what, four weeks left.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: That's true.

I mean, Trump could try to carry this out with Sidney Powell at his side. Again, though, we're seeing -- what Bill Barr did was instructive, Pamela, because it shows that even Barr, someone who has followed President Trump through so many battles, is not willing to follow him through this one, where he is siding with Powell, who has repeated baseless claims about voter fraud and wild conspiracy theories.

And Barr is flat out saying that he is not going to give those credence, and that those claims, he can't back up, that there's no evidence of.

[16:35:00]

And it's even less two news outlets like Newsmax, more favored to Trump, to have to say that they actually don't have any evidence for any of those claims that Sidney Powell has been repeating, because now they're starting to worry about legitimate lawsuits.

BROWN: Well, OK, so let's break that down a little bit more, Evan, because I'm told from sources that, basically, Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn and these others are -- really have the president's ear and that the president is shutting down other advisers in the White House who are trying to keep the guardrails saying, hey, look, that none of this would work, it's not lawful, such as enacting -- some of the things that came up enacting martial law to overturn the election.

An executive order to seize the Dominion voting machines also came up, I'm told.

But the question is, all right, you have the president. Bill Barr may not support a special counsel and some of this stuff. But what could actually happen if the president wanted to move forward with this? PEREZ: Well, he will need to find someone who can take his orders and

who will follow those orders, Pamela. And I think what you're seeing from Bill Barr and from others is, they're saying not here.

And so if the president wants to leave the White House himself with Sidney Powell and ride horseback into Georgia and all these states to go find these voting machines, he can try to do that, I suppose. But I don't see anyone in the federal government wanting to actually put themselves on the line, someone -- their reputations on the line to follow this line of thinking from the president.

I think what you're seeing is sort of a line in the sand from the Justice Department, from some of the people, some of the president's closest supporters, saying, hey, it's time, it's over.

BROWN: Yes. And I'm even hearing that from folks who are very -- have been very loyal to President Trump from the very beginning. And now they are -- they can see that they're also worried as well how they're seeing this transpire these last few weeks.

And you also have the presidency ending, Laura, with how it started, the president downplaying Russia's interference, this time over this massive cyber-hack that his own secretary of state linked to Russia. Trump suggested it was China.

Why is he still so reluctant to criticize the Russians and specifically Putin?

BARRON-LOPEZ: Well, as you said, Pamela, this has been a pattern with Trump's presidency.

From the beginning, he has never said that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. He has always sided with Russia over his own intelligence officials. And so he's continuing to do that again, whether it's because he has some fondness for Putin, or there's more to it, but he is just refusing to acknowledge the facts, or whether it's in the outcome (AUDIO GAP) loss, or also the fact that Russia again, according to Pompeo, according to intel official, appears to be responsible for the latest aggressive attack on U.S. agencies.

BROWN: All right, Laura, Evan, thank you so much. Really interesting discussion. Appreciate it. Thanks for your time.

And up next: an unbelievable twist to CNN's exclusive reporting out of Moscow, a secret Russian agent spilling details about how one of Vladimir Putin's biggest enemies was poisoned and how it's linked to underwear.

You will not want to miss this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:43:13]

BROWN: Well, today Russia is calling shocking new audiotapes fake. In recorded phone conversations, you can actually hear a Russian spy describe in detail the plot to poison opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Navalny himself managed to get the Russian operative on the phone and admit the lethal nerve agent that was used against him was planted in his underwear.

CNN's Clarissa Ward has this newest chapter in this stunning exclusive investigation.

So, first off, the big question, Clarissa. How did Navalny actually get this Russian spy to make such a confession over the phone, an unsecured line?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's really just -- it beggars belief. I mean, the mind really boggles.

But here's how he did it. Essentially, he had two components to this. Firstly, he used -- he disguised his phone number to make it look like he was making the call from a landline within the FSB headquarters, within Russian state security services. So that was one component.

But the second part is that he disguised himself -- or he pretended, rather, that he was a senior aide to the National Security Council and that he was carrying out an investigation into how the poisoning operation had gone.

And in the beginning, this operative, whose name is Konstantin Kudryavtse, we reported on him last week. He's part of this elite team of operatives who had special knowledge of chemical weapons who trailed Navalny for more than three years.

Eventually, he started to talk. And he told Navalny about the fact that the Novichok was put in his underwear. Take a listen, Pam.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

ALEXEI NAVALNY, RUSSIAN OPPOSITION LEADER (through translator): What item of clothing was the emphasis on?

The most risky piece of clothing, which one is that?

KONSTANTIN KUDRYAVTSE, RUSSIA (through translator): Underpants.

NAVALNY (through translator): Underpants.

KUDRYAVTSE (through translator): Risky in what sense?

[16:45:01]

NAVALNY (through translator): Well, in terms of where the most concentration would be.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, underpants, was it the inside seam, outside seam, what was it adjacent to?

NAVALNY (through translator): I have a block of questions here. I will discuss all of this but I also need your information. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we applied to the internal one, at least

there was application.

NAVALNY (through translator): Well, imagine underpants, what place?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The ideas, the groin.

NAVALNY (through translator): The crotch on the underpants?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, the so-called flap. There are such seams, there, so across the seams.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: As you can imagine, Pam, this puts a huge dent in the Kremlin's vociferous denials that the Russian government had anything to do with this. We've heard from the FSB security services as you mentioned. They are calling it a fake, saying it was designed to make Russian security services look bad.

But tomorrow, we anticipate hearing a little more from the Kremlin which should be interesting -- Pam.

BROWN: And I want to go back to this learning about the fact that they put this nerve agent in the underwear, the underpants. CNN talked to toxicologists about the poisoning. Why the poisoning -- why put the poison in Navalny's underwear?

WARD: So, we have spoken to a number of experts, and essentially different parts of the body are porous to different degrees. And that area, the crotch, groin area is particularly porous. So, it's a natural place for toxicologists to choose.

One other fascinating nugget that came up in this discussion, this 45 minute phone call was the bit where he talks about his role, his primary role in all this that we know was clean up operation. He says five days after Navalny was poisoned, he flew to the city of Omsk. Omsk is where Navalny's flight was diverted to, and where he landed, was taken to the hospital there.

He went and he took possession of Navalny's clothes to make sure that they were scrubbed clean. Take a listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

KUDRYAVTEEV: Yes, all is cleaned.

ALEXEI NAVALNY: Visually, it will not be visible. They did not remove, there are no stains on them, nothing?

KUDRYAVTEEV: No, nothing. They are in good condition and clean.

NAVALNY: Pants?

KUDRYAVTEEV: There's the same inside area, perhaps something was left on it, too. We washed it off there also.

But this is presumably because there's contact with the pants. Perhaps there was something on there, too. The pants were also cleansed. They're cleaned. Everything is fine with them.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

WARD: I think also what's striking, Pam, is just the very casual nature of the conversation, talking about using a powerful internationally prohibited nerve agent on an opposition member. He also seems to imply later in the conversation that the intent was to kill. Had it not been for the fact that the flight was diverted and landed early, he would probably be dead -- Pam.

BROWN: And yet the Russians say they probably would have finished it if they had been involved in this.

All right. Clarissa Ward, thank you very much for your reporting.

And black and white, a stunning admission, major newspaper apologizing for robbing, quote, an entire community of opportunity, dignity, justice, and recognition. We'll talk to the man who wrote the full page editorial about what's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:53:16]

BROWN: In the national lead, in the wave of this country's reckoning on race this year, a prominent local newspaper is issuing an apology. In a full page article, "The Kansas City Star" told readers, quote, we are sorry, apologizing for decades of coverage that honed in on crime, violence, black communities, but often ignored black culture, stayed on the sidelines during civil rights battles like desegregation, and overlooked black icons who called Kansas City home.

I want to bring in Mike Fannin. He is president and editor of "The Kansas City Star" who wrote that full page editorial.

Thank you for coming on, Mike.

MIKE FANNIN, PRESIDENT & EDITOR, THE KANSAS CITY STAR: Thanks for having me, Pamela.

BROWN: You wrote, quote, reporters felt regret that the paper's historic coverage not only did a disservice to Black Kansas Citians but also to white readers deprived of the opportunity to understand the true richness black citizens brought to Kansas City.

Your paper could just look back, vowed to do better. But you're actually rolling out a six-part series that examines your past coverage. Why was that so important and why now?

FANNIN: Well, Pamela, you know, "The Star" is known for investigative journalism. And yet as we have written stories over the years about systemic racism in the institutions that we cover in Kansas City, we never put ourselves under the microscope to try better, to better understand how "The Star" had covered the black community for years.

And without that self examination, I think many in the community felt we lacked credibility to tell some of the stories and like many great stories that come out of news rooms, this bubbled up from the ranks of a reporter, one of the veteran reporters, Ray Williams (ph), brought the idea to us.

[16:55:08]

And, you know, coming to a decision, the decision wasn't difficult to start down the path six months ago of reporting out this series because it's, you know, very clearly the right thing to do but executing the stories in a way that would express our sincerity and come without condition or qualification was difficult. And part of that is what you were just referencing. It was hard not to feel some sense of shame in this company that we all love and it was hard to reconcile some of what we found that we know today.

BROWN: And from what I read, your newspaper put all these investigative resources you have into this six-part series and you found some notable examples. You wrote about the massive plaza flood of 1977, your paper focused on a property damage to a white businessman's country club and largely ignored the 25 people who died, including eight black residents. You noted death of Charlie Parker, iconic jazz musician from Kansas City, and that Parker didn't get a significant headline in your paper until he died in 1920, and even then misspelled his name, got his age wrong.

You know, one of the graphs that gave me chills is how it was tradition there for white families to receive the enough in their driveway, but you have black families with their children growing up thinking I'm never going to be in the paper unless I get into trouble. That gives you chills.

What's the cumulative impact of mistakes like this do you think?

FANNIN: Well, I think that it is historic disenfranchisement, you know, when -- I think we all had a vague sense that our history was not spotless but I don't think anyone involved in the project knew, understood the depths of that failure and what we had done that had effected the Kansas City landscape, you know, for generations. You know, it was really painful to truly understand through much of the first 100 years of the newspaper that black kids in Kansas City were brought up, you know, and black families in Kansas City knew they couldn't trust, there was a lack of trust and credibility in that community and that's heartbreaking.

And when you think about "The Star's" platform, how powerful "The Star" was at that time, and by the way, we are certainly not perfect now, don't want to suggest that, we still have a lot of work to do, but this is at least a start and place to go down the road here.

But when "The Star" was not only the biggest morning and afternoon newspaper in town but had the biggest TV station, biggest radio station and was really the biggest news outlet in six states and had subscribers all across that region. When you think about what the opportunity was there for "The Star" to stand up and say we shouldn't have these racist real estate covenants, you know, and we're going to recognize and write about the issues that affect the black community, I think the landscape, you know, no doubt in my mind would be different, very different than it is today.

But we're dealing with a lot of the same societal problems that are happening in every other city in America. Missouri unfortunately led the nation in black homicides. There are so many different pegs that you can think of where "The Star" had stood up and made these acknowledgments and stood up for all Kansas City citizens, how different the community could have been. So, it's ultimately a pretty sad story.

And, you know, at the end of the day, told the news team this morning, everyone should be proud, and I think they are. Nobody is taking a victory lap because hopefully from here, you know, a relationship repaired that really begins.

BROWN: OK. Mike Fannin, thank you so much for coming on.

FANNIN: Thank you, Pamela. Appreciate it.

BROWN: And as we're approaching 318,000 deaths in this country, we want to take a moment, and remember someone we lost in this pandemic.

Billy Laredo (ph) was a 45-year-old attorney, and beloved, and respected member of his community. His wife of 22 years said he took every precaution possible, and still got sick.

On his death bed, he wrote one last love letter to his wife saying, in part, if I don't make it, I want you to know that I lived a happy wonderful life with you and would never have traded it for all of the riches in the world.

Gives you chills. We send love and condolences to Billy's family.

Follow me on Twitter, @PamelaBrownCNN, or tweet the show @TheLeadCNN.

Our coverage continues right now.

[17:00:00]