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New Day

All 10 Former Defense Secretaries Condemn Bid To Overturn Election; Trump Warns Of "Criminal Offense" If GA Officials Don't Change Vote Count; Dozen GOP Senators, 140 House GOP To Vote Against Counting Electoral Votes; Did Trump Break The Law In Call To Pressure Georgia Officials?; Trump Demands Georgia Officials "Find" Votes To Overturn Results. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired January 04, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST, NEW DAY: We want to welcome our viewers in United States and all around the world. This is New Day. And if you've ever wondered how President Trump gets weak people to do his bidding you are about to hear it. This is President Trump in his own words trying to undo his election loss.

These stunning new audio tapes reveal Mr. Trump trying to manipulate and threaten Georgia Secretary of State to go along with a corrupt scam but the Secretary of State won't do it. This audio was first obtained by "The Washington Post" and in it you'll hear President Trump all over the map, bullying, criticizing being manipulative, and sadly delusional about how and why he wants elected officials to overturn Joe Biden's win?

Legal experts call some of this call illegal. Some of its impeachable but all of that is deeply disturbing.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST, NEW DAY: The President's behavior in these asks, and his attitude has focused so concerned this morning, that all 10 living former defense secretaries have forcefully declared that the election is over. They wrote this public letter criticizing attempts to overturn the outcome of the election.

All of them are stressing that involving the military in the election would be dangerous. Now the idea for this letter was Cheney. So what does it tell you, that these people including Donald Rumsfeld, Jim Mattis? What does it tell you they felt the need to write this? What are they hearing about possible pressure on the military to do something 16 days left in this presidency? CNN's Joe Johns live at the White House in this remarkable moment, Joe?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: John you know, the timing of that call is striking comes just a few days before the Electoral College votes are supposed to be counted up on Capitol Hill, as you all said at the top this recording was first reported by "The Washington Post".

Now this is going to increase scrutiny on the president as well as on his allies on Capitol Hill who continue to try to appease him. The president's critics say it's an abuse of power, and possibly even extortion.

The stunning recording of President Trump in his own words, pressuring the Georgia Secretary of State to overturn the election results in a phone call.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: So all I want to do is this, I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have. Because we want to say and flipping the state is a great testament to our country. Because, you know, at this, this is just a testament that they can admit to a mistake or whatever you want to call it if it was a mistake.

I don't know. A lot of people think it wasn't a mistake.

JOHNS (voice over): For an hour Trump repeated baseless claims of voter fraud and attacked Brad Raffensperger for refusing to say Trump won the contest in Georgia that he lost.

TRUMP: And the people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there's nothing wrong with saying that, you know that you've recalculated, because it 2,036 and absentee ballots. I mean, they're all exact numbers that were done by accounting firms, law firms, et cetera. And even if you cut them in half, cut them in half and cut them in half again, it's more votes than we need.

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER, GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, Mr. President determines that you have is the data you have is wrong.

JOHNS (voice over): Raffensperger, a Republican and Trump supporter has overseen multiple recounts and audits of the election in Georgia, each one reaffirming President-Elect Joe Biden's victory.

RAFFENSPERGER: Mr. President, the problem you have with social media they can people can say--

TRUMP: You know, this isn't social media, this is Trump media. It's really not it's not social media. I don't care about social but I couldn't care less social media is big tech; big tech is on your side. You know, I don't even know why you have a side because you should want to have an accurate election. And you're a Republican.

RAFFENSPERGER: We believe that we do have an accurate election.

JOHNS (voice over): The president's conversation after weeks of slamming Georgia election officials.

TRUMP: There's no way I lost your job. There's no way we won by hundreds of 1000s of votes. I'm just going by small numbers when you add them up. They're many times the 11,000. But I want that state by hundreds of thousands of votes.

JOHNS (voice over): In reality, Biden won Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes. Biden's senior advisors saying the tape shows irrefutable proof of a president pressuring and threatening and official of his own party to get him to rescind the state's lawful certified vote count and fabricate another in its place.

And at a drive in rally ahead of Georgia's senate runoff races, Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris weighed in on the audio.

KAMALA HARRIS (D), VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT OF UNITED STATES: Well, it was yes, certainly the voice of desperation most certainly that and it was a bald ball faced pulled abuse of power by the President of the United States.

[07:05:00]

JOHNS (voice over): Trump is set to head to Georgia later today for campaign events supporting the two Republican candidates, Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. This one day before end of the voting that will determine whether Democrats take control of the Senate. Capitol Hill democrats and some Republicans outraged by the president's efforts.

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD): It has all the elements of a criminal action, because you have the president trying to illegally change the results of an election by essentially threatening the Secretary of State and others here.

So I certainly think it merits a good work whether or not people decide to actually prosecute at some point, that's a separate issue.

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): It's disgusting and quite honestly, it's going to be interesting, you know, all these members of congress have now come out and said they're going to object to the election. I don't know how you can do that right now with a clear conscience, because this is so obviously, beyond the pale is probably not even the way to describe it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS (on camera): Now, the last count, we have 12 Republican Senators, and as many as 140 Republican members of the House of Representatives have said they are likely to vote against the Electoral College count, though, that is not nearly enough to keep Joe Biden from becoming the next president, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Joe, thank you very much for bringing us all of that reporting. Joining us now is the reporter who broke this story Amy Gardner she's A National Political Reporter for "The Washington Post" who obtained this audio tape.

Amy, thank you very much for being here obviously, I don't want you to reveal any sensitive sources or methods. But what can you tell us about how you got this audio tape? Who recorded it and why?

AMY GARDNER, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, WASHINGTON POST: Not very much, I'm not going to say where I got the audio, I can tell you that the individual who recorded the call, thought that the American public should hear it, and that the call was legally recorded.

So, you know, that's about all I am willing to say.

CAMEROTA: And that's really important, because as you know, some Republicans have come out in defense of the president and said this is an outrage. This is an illegally recorded call. Georgia is a one party state meaning that whoever wants to record a call, if they give themselves permission, they can do so.

GARDNER: And so is D.C. just to be clear.

CAMEROTA: Good to know.

BERMAN: I'm not sure I fully understand why the president was even making this phone call. Because when you have these explicit asks there, and the two that you highlighted so prominently in your piece, you know, I just want to find 11,780 votes.

That's not ambiguous. I mean, that's a single entendre. The president saying I want to find the votes to overturn this election. And then the other statement that was made was when he suggests that the Secretary of State of Georgia was somehow criminally liable for not participating in the president's scheme. What does the president want to get out of this?

GARDNER: Yes, I think that the - I think you're absolutely right, that his use of the term, you know, criminal liability. And, you know, telling Raffensperger and his lawyer, Ryan, Germany, that they were doing something very risky by not finding these votes is the sort of the crux of what's, you know, where the most potential legal liability is in this call for President Trump.

Because it does sound like he's issuing a threat. And it's a threat that he actually currently for 16 more days has the power to potentially carry out. He's the President of the United States. He could pressure the Justice Department to launch a federal investigation.

So you know, from legal efforts that I've spoken to, that is the most interesting and controversial piece of the call. However, I also think it's worth noting that the federal statutes that govern this kind of conduct, you know, if Trump were actually seeking to, you know, wipe out illegal election result, they require proving that the person knows that they're asking for a crime to happen.

In other words, you have to know that the current result is the right result and that the result you're seeking is not accurate. And he was ambiguous about that. And he was maybe even a little careful about that. He threw out these allegations of fraud.

He claimed that there are 5000 votes that were illegally cast by dead people and that there were 18,000 ballots that were fed through machines three times. And so he - he's claiming that there are legal votes that were discarded for him. And so proving that he knows that what he's asking for is a crime would be tricky. And so a lot of the legal experts that I spoke to were very clear. [07:10:00]

GARDNER: Let's not get bogged down in the weeds of whether he actually committed a crime or whether we could prove it. Let's focus on the irrefutable fact that this is a flagrant abuse of office, and that it's clear he is trying to overturn a legal election result.

And whether he knows that it's illegal result or not, is almost immaterial. He's either knows or he's diluted.

CAMEROTA: Well, let's go there. Let's go there. Because there's so much of this audio that reveals such strange and twisted thinking, and thought patterns. I mean, yes, he says he's sure that 5000 dead people voted at one point.

It's either Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger or Mr. Germany, who's also on the call, who's the attorney, right? Who says no there are two, we did remember?

GARDNER: That was Raffensperger.

CAMEROTA: Well, yes, we did investigations three times over, we found two people, sometimes people vote and then die, by the way, then that's what happens. But anyway, they have to clarify that for him. And then he has all of these conspiracy threads that he's spouting that he doesn't sound like he even understands about, well, did Dominion come in and replaces the inner workings of the machine?

Has anybody seen the inner machines working? I mean, do you have any thoughts? Or do your sources in Georgia have any thoughts on his mental fitness?

GARDNER: I mean, look, I don't think that I wasn't surprised by the substance of the call, because we've been really all of us have been reading reporting for weeks about how much Trump is ruminating and stewing and obsessing about the loss and unwilling to accept it and not really carrying out the regular duties of office, not talking about the pandemic, not talking a lot about the vaccine rollout, only minimally engaged on the stimulus discussions on Capitol Hill.

So it on one level, I wasn't surprised, but listening to the call, hearing his voice for an hour in some minutes. And I've listened to it many, many times over the weekend, as we prepare to publish this article was stunning, because you really got the flavor of just how desperate he is, and just how unwilling or unable he is to accept his defeat?

I mean, he said, and your clip played one instance of this, but he said maybe six times, there's no way I'll ask Georgia, there's no way and you could feel the desperation. You could also sense that the length of the call was a metaphor for his desperation, because he just said he wasn't willing to hang up at one point toward the end of the call he says, you know, I know this isn't going anywhere.

But then he continues, and it's as if he would just - he was going to keep on going forever, because he didn't want to let go. And it was Brad Raffensperger, who ultimately stepped in and said, OK, Mr. President, thanks for your time, because he was home with his grandkids. He wanted to get off the phone.

BERMAN: Yes, Tony Schwartz, who co-wrote the "Art of the deal", just told us that what he heard in the president's voice, you just so aptly described, desperation, desperation, and to mention this. And it's a hell of a thing, Amy, that the two possibilities for what happened in this phone call or either A criminal ask, or B so confused as to be delusional, as you say. And that's a hell of a thing for our democracy this morning.

GARDNER: Well, the other thing that the call reveals is that the president's surrounds himself with people who echo back his conspiracy theories. I mean, at one point in the call White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, tries to refute Brad Raffensperger's claimed that there were only two people, bad people whose names were on ballots.

He's like, no, I guarantee you there's many, many more than that. So you get a little sense that there's some enabling going on, you know, in the people around him.

CAMEROTA: Good point. And also, there's a moment where the where Brad Raffensperger, or someone says you can't trust everything you read on social media, basically, they're trying to tell me and he says, No, no, this isn't social media. I don't care about that. This is Trump media. And that tells you all you need to know that's where he's getting his information, Trump media, which is I don't know what Amy, thank you very much for sharing your reporting with us really interesting to talk to you.

GARNBER: My pleasure. Take care.

CAMEROTA: You too. We're going to play you much more of the audio from this phone call and the political fallout next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

BERMAN: Developing overnight this damning new audio captures President Trump demanding that Georgia's election officials find him votes to overturn the election results there. We're going to play more of this call. And again, we just want to warn you that what the president says here, it's all a lie. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The people of Georgia are angry. And these numbers are going to be repeated on Monday night, along with others that we're going to have by that time, which are much more substantially but and the people of Georgia are angry the people the country irregularly.

And there's nothing wrong with saying that, you know that you've recalculated, because the 2036 and absentee ballots. I mean, they're all exact numbers that were done by accounting firms, law firms, etc. And even if you cut them in half, cut them in half and cut them in half again it's more votes than we need.

RAFFENSPERGER: Well, Mr. President the talents that you have is the data you have is wrong. We talked to the Congressman, and they were surprised, but they are yes, there's a person named Mr. Reynard that came to these meetings and presented data.

And he said that there were dead people, I believe it was upwards of 5000. The actual number was two. Two people that were dead that voted. And so that's wrong. That was two.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: A problem you have Mr. President is you're just plain wrong that from the Georgia's Secretary of State. Joining us now CNN Political Analyst David Gregory, also with us Former Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman his last day in office was yesterday.

[07:20:00]

BERMAN: Welcome congressman to the first day of the rest of your life. What should he's the author I should say of Bigfoot? It's complicated. Frankly, Bigfoot is simple compared to what we're seeing now out of Washington.

So Congressman, what should Republicans in congress, including those who are considering raising objections to the Electoral College count? What should they take away from this phone call now that has come to light?

FORMER REP. DENVER RIGGLEMAN (R-VA): Yes, thanks for having me this morning. First of all, don't object. Second, I hope they listened to the whole call. And you said something earlier when I think when I listen to it, and I listen, I don't want to laugh at certain parts of the tape, because this is actually deadly serious.

When he said, the problem that you have is that your data is wrong. You know, I felt like OK, this sounds like an intelligence officer, how I would actually speak to a general to say, listen, you know, not it's not that you're wrong. It's just that your data is wrong.

And, you know, I just found it really interesting listening to all of the conspiracy theories you throw in there, I don't know, you know, listening to the entire tape, but I know David Gregory's on here, you know, he did interweave five or six different conspiracy theories.

And I felt like, I mean, I don't know if I want to use this analogy, but I felt like he was freebasing HN. It was just a main line of conspiracy theories that were sort of coming out of his mouth. And, and this is what I've studied, United Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence.

And just listening to the entire one hour conversation, I started to get a little bit afraid, not just for the Republic, but who's actually talking to the president, and where he's getting his information. And, and it seems to me that he's getting a lot of his information, really, from the dark corners of the internet. And that information is bubbling up through all the layers of social media. And it's hitting One American News.

It's hitting News Max it's hitting Parlor, it's hitting Gab, it's hitting Rumble. It's hitting YouTube, it's hitting Twitter. And I think that's what - that information, that false information is being aggregated and then used as proof.

And I just find it stunning. And I would hope that the congressional representatives right now say enough of this. After listening to the tape, it's obvious that there is no proof here, and we need to move on now and get ready for transition.

CAMEROTA: David, Mr. Riggleman makes such a great point. It's QAnon central. I mean, hearing the president wave in these dark conspiracy theories and sell them so convincingly and obviously believe them, what did you hear when you listen to them?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I just - first of all, I want to underline that. I mean, I think what the congressman says is vitally important. There's a mainstreaming of fringe, incorrect information. And it's now kind of entering into the bloodstream and there are people who support Trump, who are therefore willfully ignorant about what's going on.

I mean, this is an extraordinary moment, not just because we have a president who is trying now to steal the election, and to overturn the will of the voters. That's just clear. But you have a bipartisan effort now bipartisan, which is not something we've seen a lot of during the Trump Administration, to say no, this isn't right.

You don't have your facts, right. So you want to say to people who are Trump supporters? Look, you're being misled? You may have lots of grievances. You may have lots of reasons why you still support Trump. But these are not facts. This is wrong.

This is actually dangerous. The courts have said so including Trump appointees. Top Republicans have said so you can't just keep dismissing all of these people. And all of these people are wrong. I think that's a moment we're at. I just think that this is the distillation.

I think maybe you said it. But before that, you know, this is everything we've really known about Trump from the very beginning. You think about the Ukraine example. He was afraid to go against Biden he tried to take Biden down then. Now he lost a Biden, and he's trying to take it down again.

BERMAN: It really is remarkable the similarities there. Listen, the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger just did an interview on Good Morning America. This is the first time we have heard from him since this phone call. And this is what the Secretary says about how he felt during the call. So listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you feel the pressure when he said find the votes? RAFFENSPERGER: No, I - we have to follow the process follow the law. Everything we've done for the last 12 months follows the Constitution of the State of Georgia follows the United States Constitution follows state law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: He also said that he didn't want to have that phone call to begin with. He didn't think it was appropriate for him, Congressman to even have a phone call with the President of the United States. But the president's staff pushed it. They wanted the President on the phone there to tell the Secretary to go find these votes.

Again, Congressman, you've been out of office for less than 24 hours at this point. I just want to know what your message is to your colleagues this morning. They have a choice. They have a really important choice to make.

RIGGLEMAN: They do and you know what I dearly wish that I could actually brief the president with every single one of the people who are feeding them this information, I think even just me or just an atom or just some of these people that's been in the military that's done intelligence work in data work, I'd love to have the chance to sit down with him.

[07:25:00]

RIGGLEMAN: And it could just be me, honestly, John, it could just be me against whatever 100 or 150 - or QAnon people he wants to bring in the room. And they're easy to refute. This isn't hard. And that's what I told, I've told my colleagues this, this isn't something that where I haven't been shy about picking up the phone and saying.

Listen, guys, if you've ever trusted me, and 20 years of doing data work doing non kinetic attack, algorithmic warfare, I'm doing network modeling everything that I've done in my life, trust me, that what you're hearing from the president is not true. It's untrue. It's not factual.

And I think hearing the call to and I would like to say this, he doesn't - I would say he believes this is true. He absolutely believes it. I think, at this point, when you're listening to him on that one hour call, I think you'd have to come to the conclusion that he believes it's true.

And I would tell my colleagues that that really is what we talked about the metastasizing of disinformation, how it bleeds into our Republic, and how it gets to our top leaders? And if they're using I would say, to qualify their arguments, we're in huge trouble. This isn't. This isn't something we say?

Well, it's a little bit of a factual error. It wasn't 5000 people dead people that voted it was 2000. You're talking about an amazing difference in numbers from 5000 to two. And I want to just say this number very quickly, before I stop, you know, this sentence, almost 70 percent of the Republicans in the House right now are probably vote to object to the electors.

And that is, that's what should scare people. Let's do math. And that should scare people right now. And I think it would be a hell of a scrap on the floor if I was there right now.

CAMEROTA: David, we only have a few seconds left. What's going to happen? Will this tape change anything about what's going to happen in Congress this week?

GREGORY: Oh, I don't think so. I mean, I think the congressman's got it right that that the president soon to be former president still has a chokehold on a corner of the Republican Party that is defining the party. I don't have a lot of faith in elected leaders elected Republicans to stand up to him.

What has to happen is that Trump has to fade away and become less important with less media attention and less oxygen. And the work that has to be done as some of the work that's already been done, the ball work in our democracy, the courts, people like the Georgia Secretary of State and election officials who stood their ground. That's part of what makes this democracy great.

And we've seen that resilience when it's been under attack in lots of corners, which should make people really very encouraged.

CAMEROTA: David Gregory and Denver Riggleman thank you both very much for all of the analysis. All right now to Coronavirus is the Trump Administration considering a shift in its vaccine strategy as the number of Americans vaccinated still is well short of their promise. We discuss that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)