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Sources: Trump To Issue Around 100 Pardons And Commutations Tomorrow; How Disinformation And Lies Poisoned Trump Supporters; U.S. Nears Grim Milestone Of 400,000 Deaths From Coronavirus. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired January 18, 2021 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: For coming on. We wish you a healthy, happy, safe, historic week in Washington.

REP. DEBBIE DINGELL (D-MI) (via Cisco Webex): To you, to the country, that's what America needs.

BERMAN: So be sure to join us on Wednesday for CNN's special all-day live coverage of Joe Biden's historic inauguration.

Sources tell CNN that President Trump is planning dozens, maybe up to 100 pardons and commutations over the next 24 hours. Who is on the list, who is not? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Developing this morning, CNN has learned that President Trump is preparing to issue roughly 100 pardons and commutations tomorrow in his final full day in office.

Joining us now is CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, Elie Honig. Elie, great to see you. What do you see in this potential flurry of upcoming pardons?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Alisyn, I'm looking for more of the same. I mean, more, utter corruption, cronyism, and self-dealing.

[07:35:02]

If you look at the way President Trump has used the pardon power over his term, he's really only given out pardons to certain categories of people.

First of all, his political allies who declined to flip on him. People like Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort to powerful, primarily Republican, disgraced former politicians. Chris Collins, Duncan Hunter, Steve Stockman -- two rich, well-connected guys. Charles Kushner, who is Jared's father; Eddie DeBartolo, who is the owner of the San Francisco 49ers. And then, to various sort of celebrities or people who have been endorsed by celebrities. So if I had to bet, Alisyn, I would bet that the vast majority of people we see pardoned tomorrow fall into one of those categories.

CAMEROTA: OK. Well, there's a new wrinkle, Elie. "The New York Times" is reporting that people are paying for pardons.

And so there's all of these influenced peddlers that have always surrounded President Trump, from lobbyists to his lawyers, friends, whatever. And that high-net-worth felons are paying these folks -- I don't know -- 10 -- I mean, one estimate was tens of thousands of dollars. One estimate in "The New York Times" is that FBI is looking into Rudy Giuliani asking for $2 million for a pardon.

Is this legal?

HONIG: Yes, Alisyn. Look, that gets my old prosecutor adrenalin flowing. I would absolutely want to dig into this as a prosecutor. I mean, the presidential pardon power is very broad but it doesn't mean it's a total free-for-all. If people are exchanging cash or promises or benefits, even indirectly, in exchange for pardons, that can be a federal crime.

My old office, the Southern District of New York, investigated Bill Clinton criminally for his 2001 pardon of Marc Rich. Now, that did not result in criminal charges. But criminal charges absolutely could be in play here.

And you mentioned the fact that Rudy Giuliani requested $2 million to obtain a pardon for a client. I mean, let me tell you, there is no way there's $2 million worth of actual legal work being done by Rudy Giuliani there. So as a prosecutor, I would definitely want to take a look at that.

CAMEROTA: How much does he charge to get you impeached, you know?

HONIG: Right. I don't know what the fee was, yes.

CAMEROTA: Right, what was that?

But it's not that President Trump is taking -- I mean, as far as we know -- it's not that President Trump is taking this money, it's that the lobbyists are getting paid for their fees. Is that legal or not legal?

HONIG: Yes. I mean, again, you'd have to connect the dots.

So look, if -- the most obvious form of bribery is A pays B in exchange for a pardon. But if it goes through a middle-man -- a Rudy Giuliani -- if A pays B and then B does a favor for C, or C does something for B, then it can still be a bribe.

In other words, bribes don't always have to go direct from the payer to the recipient. They can go through a middle-man. Whether that might be Rudy Giuliani or one of these other attorneys involved, that's influence peddling and that could be criminal, for sure. CAMEROTA: The latest reporting is that at the moment -- that's

there's 52 hours left -- President Trump is not going to self-pardon or, at the moment, is thinking he won't -- and won't pardon his children. I don't know why not. I really don't understand. I don't understand the calculus for why not since so -- he's had so few guardrails or any sort of conventional wisdom has never really kept him constrained.

HONIG: Yes, it's sort of a double-edged sword here, I think, if we're talking about a self-pardon by the president. On the one hand, if he does it, it will be a historic stain. It's not even clear he's allowed to do that legally.

If he doesn't do it, however -- look, the fact is he's got real potential criminal exposure here, everything from Ukraine to the Capitol riots a couple of weeks ago. So if he does not pardon himself, then there's a very real chance that he could be investigated and potentially prosecuted by DOJ.

Look, DOJ has a policy against indicting a sitting president. But as of Wednesday at 12:00 and one-second p.m., that protection goes away and he could be criminally charged.

CAMEROTA: Elie, while I have you I want to get your thoughts on what the legality is of prosecuting or trying -- I guess trying to convict President Trump in a Senate trial after he is out of office. There have been legal arguments -- and I'm sure you've heard -- that have been made that the sole purpose of a Senate trial is to remove a sitting president. Once that president has been removed, you don't -- the Senate doesn't hold a trial for a regular citizen.

HONIG: Yes, I think that's wrong as a matter of law. First of all, it's been done before. We've had an example. It was a long time ago in 1876 where an official was impeached and tried after he had already resigned.

Look, it cannot be sort of a blank check to engage in wild corruption, even in the last couple of days, weeks, and hours of a presidency. And importantly, Alisyn, the Constitution gives us another remedy other than removal. Even if someone's already out of office, the Senate can vote to disqualify President Trump to prevent him from ever holding federal office again.

So I think constitutionally, historically it's clear that there can be a pardon -- excuse me, a trial even after the president is out of office, and I think we will see that.

CAMEROTA: Elie, thank you very much. I feel smarter. Thank you. I appreciate --

HONIG: Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: I appreciate that.

[07:40:00] It's been 10 days since President Trump was permanently banned from Twitter. Has that slowed down the spread of disinformation? A CNN reality check, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: In the remarkable video released by "The New Yorker" that we're seeing for the first time this morning, you can actually hear the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol say they are inspired by President Trump and his big lie about election fraud and the disinformation he has spread for years.

John Avlon with a reality check.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: New footage of the Capitol Hill attack published by "The New Yorker," makes it clear that a significant number of our fellow citizens have lost touch with reality. The conspiracy theories and hyperpartisan call to arms can consume people and make them believe they're defending the Constitution by assaulting the Constitution. They think they're patriots, but they're hatriots. And this video and others show that some believed they were sent by President Trump.

CAPITOL RIOTER: We are listening to Trump, your boss.

[07:45:00]

AVLON: Untangling this mess will take time. We need accountability before we can find unity.

And this didn't emerge overnight. For decades, there's been a strain of right-wing conspiracy theories that demonized Democrats and threatened violence. What's different is that they've been validated by the president's lies and clustered via social media. It's precisely why combatting disinformation is so essential to reuniting as a nation.

Take a look at how a self-serving conspiracy theory proliferated via social media in the hours after the attack on the Capitol, falsely blaming left-wing radicals rather than right-wing supporters of the president. Now, according to data analysis by the media intelligence firm Zignal Labs, more than 411,000 mentions of this lie appeared online in less than 24 hours.

The ecosystem of the echo chamber here is instructive. It went from pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood to a televangelist Trump supporter, to being liked by Eric Trump, which increased its reach. Far-right Congressman Paul Gosar, linked by the organizer to the 'Stop the Steal' efforts, then pushed out the lie on social media. And by 7:43, the baseless allegations emerged on Fox News.

SARAH PALIN (R), FORMER ALASKA GOVERNOR: I think a lot of it is the Antifa folks.

AVLON: By 10:00 p.m., the lies reached the House floor, repeated by Trumpist Congressman Matt Gaetz.

REP. MATT GAETZ (R-FL): "The Washington Times" has just reported that some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters and, in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group Antifa.

AVLON: Now, that article Gaetz mentioned was later retracted, but not before it was shared nearly 180,000 times on Facebook and Twitter. And by the next morning, the lie was being pushed by President Trump, according to Axios.

Now, this echo chamber fits a larger pattern of how bots and trolls amplify Trump's disinformation megaphone or MAGA-phone, giving the illusion of mass support for fringe conspiracies while winning new converts.

And it helps account for how researchers at Cornell found that Trump was likely the largest single driver of COVID disinformation in the world.

This is not over but there are some hopeful signs that the fever might break. Get this -- there's been a 73 percent decline in election fraud misinformation since Donald Trump was de-platformed from social media after the Capitol attack, according to Zignal. And it also helped that some 70,000 Twitter accounts peddling QAnon conspiracies were taken down.

This is a short-term solution but it offers an off-ramp from disinformation escalation -- a way to turn down the MAGA-phone. And that's something we're going to need if we're going to regain our ability to reason together as a nation.

And that's your reality check.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Our thanks to John for that.

So the U.S. could very well pass 400,000 deaths from coronavirus today. That is a horrifying number. But there is one key statistic that is good news. We'll tell you what that is, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:51:50]

CAMEROTA: The coronavirus pandemic in the United States is nearing another grim milestone. This one, 400,000 American deaths. January has been very deadly. More than 50,000 American deaths reported just this month and we're a little more than halfway through it.

Joining us now is CNN medical analyst, Dr. Leana Wen. She is the former Baltimore city health commissioner.

Dr. Win, the deaths are impossible for our minds to endure or imagine -- you know, what we've already been through and what the days ahead look like. But this morning, are there some metrics that suggest that we're coming out of this? I mean, in terms of hospitalizations and new cases, are the numbers finally coming down?

DR. LEANA WIN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST, FORMER BALTIMORE CITY HEALTH COMMISSIONER: They seem to be coming down a little bit Alisyn, but I'm not convinced at all that we are past the worst of it. We added 100,000 new cases in just over a month. The CDC's own projections show that we are about to face 90,000 more deaths in the next three weeks, which means that that's an average of 4,200 deaths every single day.

So I think we have some very dark days ahead of us and I want people to remember that it really is up to us as to what happens after that. It's up to the federal government and our state governments to speed up vaccinations, but it's also up to each of us to keep safe and avoid those indoor gatherings, continue masking and physical distancing because things are looking very bleak right now all across the country.

BERMAN: And the hospitalizations right now are 124,000, which is an incredibly high number, but it's less than it was a week ago. We were up to 132,000. You can see that crest is starting to go down. What we do now will determine whether it keeps on going down.

And the sad reality is that even where it is, the death rate of 3,000- plus a day will not go down. Which is why Ron Klain, the incoming chief of staff, and CDC director Rochelle Walensky, who will be CDC director in two days -- they're warning we'll reach 500,000 deaths in February. And there's every reason to believe they will if you just look at the math.

Dr. Wen, in terms of the vaccinations, there is concern this morning about whether we have enough doses where we need those doses. There are states saying -- because the Trump administration has said, you know, we don't have the reserve that we promised you. We have -- the stuff that we said we were going to release, it doesn't actually exist.

So there is concern in some places that the possibility of a shortage, even though right now there is 20 million excess doses out there that have been administered.

WEN: I just don't understand how no one is able to give a straight answer to the question of how many doses are out there that are ready to be distributed and at what point. There needs to be a straightforward public accounting of this. Someone needs to know the answer of how many doses are ready to be distributed to states. How many doses are about to be ready but are just about to be -- but are still in the factories and they could be shipped in a week or two.

States need to know this for planning purposes. We need to have a public dashboard that accounts for where vaccines are at all times and that includes after they get distributed to the states, too. Because we know that there are huge bottlenecks. This is the reason why only about 30 percent of all vaccines distributed have been administered. We need to know where these bottlenecks are.

[07:55:10]

And that also holds the entities accountable. Those entities that are able to distribute vaccines quickly should be given more and other entities should have their vaccine doses redistributed. It should be use it or lose it. Speed is so critical at this point.

CAMEROTA: Here are the numbers as far as we know them. Thirty-one million doses distributed to the states; only 12 million doses administered. Obviously, we've made this point -- far below the projections that were made by the Trump administration.

But some states say that they are worried that they're not getting, as you say, the replenishment here. This is from the Oregon Health Authority. They sent a letter to Sec. Alex Azar last week.

"We became concerned when we discovered that there were not additional doses available for allocation. This is extremely disturbing and puts our plans to expand eligibility at grave risk."

So, I mean -- and Oregon's not alone. I hear people concerned in Connecticut. I hear people concerned in New York -- in New York City -- having to cancel some appointments that have been made. So it sounds like some states are running out.

WEN: That's right. I think that the expanded eligibility is the right thing to do because we also heard so many reports of doses being thrown out because they weren't in a category. There just was a mismatch of supply and demand in some areas. But if you expand eligibility there's going to be increased demand. So there are going to be millions of people who now think that they can get the vaccine who really want it but now don't have a place to go.

And how can states possibly plan ahead? They need to hire vaccinators. They need to have sites open. They need to have appointments ready to go. But if they don't know what's coming their way and they also don't know how to plan for reserving second doses for everyone who gets first doses.

So that, again, why -- that's, again, why that public accounting and reporting is so important.

And I hope that that's the number one priority for the Biden team coming in and taking stock of what exactly has happened thus far, setting up these mass vaccination sites, distributing to community pharmacies, to doctors' offices, to community health centers. Because this is all-hands-on-deck effort and this needs to be the number-one priority because lives are at stake.

BERMAN: The incoming Biden administration is trying to send the message that things will get worse before they get better. Part of that might be expectations and I think part of it is just the science that it will take time for things to turn around.

But I do wonder what kind of a near-immediate difference you think it will make when you have the leadership of this country, starting Wednesday, coming out in what I imagine will be every day saying wear a mask. Go put your mask on right now.

WEN: Well, lack of consistent messaging is one major reason why we've gotten to where we are. Having a national plan -- or rather, not having a national plan is another reason. And actually, when the Biden team came out with their plan that was what I was thinking about. If only we'd had a national plan the last 10 months, what a big difference that would have made.

And so, I do think that we are headed in the right direction but it's going to be challenging. Our country is more divided and polarized than it's ever been and I think that President-elect Biden's biggest challenge is going to be winning the hearts and minds of a lot of people who did not vote for him, may not agree with him, and may not even be listening to public health experts.

So I hope that he also enlists not just doctors and scientists -- which I think it's great to have doctors and scientists speak for the voice of science here -- but also Republicans. People who did not vote for him and did not support him -- religious leaders, business leaders. Really, all parts of society need to be on board with his messaging of saving lives.

CAMEROTA: Dr. Leana Wen, thank you very much for all of the information.

And "NEW DAY" continues right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Here on the streets of Washington, D.C. it does feel somewhat like the calm before the storm.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is a profound threat from domestic violence extremists of the nature we saw on January sixth.

MAYOR MURIEL BOWSER (D), WASHINGTON, D.C.: We don't want to see fences. We definitely don't want to see armed troops on our streets. But we do have to take a different posture.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Protests have popped off in a handful of states.

LT. MICHAEL SHAW, MICHIGAN STATE POLICE: We wanted to make sure that what happened in Washington did not happen here in Michigan.

CAPITOL RIOTERS: Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New video from "The New Yorker" magazine giving us a fresh look at the deadly attack.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think what the video is showing us is what so many of us who experienced that day know -- there was a coup.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman. BERMAN: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world.

We have reached the final hours of Donald Trump's presidency. America badly shaken this morning bracing for the possibility of more deadly violence. This, as Joe Biden prepares to take office in just two days.

The inauguration at the U.S. Capitol, Wednesday, will look just so different from anything we've ever seen. Nothing like it before.

I want you to look at these photos from the National Mall from Sunday. This is typically a viewing area for presidential inaugurations. I mean, on any Sunday.