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Dem & GOP Senators Lobby White House for More Targeted Relief Bill; Trump Plotted to Pick Loyalist as Acting A.G. to Overturn Election. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired January 25, 2021 - 06:00   ET

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

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Joe Biden says the American Rescue Plan is a top legislative priority.

[05:59:42]

XAVIER BECERRA, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY NOMINEE: You can't just tell the states and the local government, here's some vaccines, now you go do it. You have to provide some resources.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): What we cannot do is wait weeks and weeks to go forward. We have got to act now.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This will be history again as we gear up for the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): I think the trial is stupid. I think it's counterproductive. It's like taking a bunch of gasoline and pouring it on top of the fire.

SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): What we saw, which is incitement to insurrection, is an impeachable offense. If not, what is?

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ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Monday, January 25, 6 a.m. here in New York. And Tom Brady is going to his tenth Super Bowl.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: My gosh. This is what you're leading with?

BERMAN: His tenth Super Bowl. Tom Brady's first Super Bowl -- Tom Brady's first Super Bowl is old enough to drink legally. His fourth just had its bar mitzvah.

CAMEROTA: Wow.

BERMAN: Now, I'm told the Chiefs will also be playing in this game in a couple of weeks. I just wanted to throw that out there.

We have major new developments this morning on the push for economic relief for millions of Americans. New information this morning about a conference call held by White House officials with a bipartisan group of senators to discuss the $1.9 trillion plan.

But there is major pushback from Republican senators, Republicans that the White House would need. So if Joe Biden can't get Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, how on earth will he get to the ten Republicans he wants this to pass this in a bipartisan way?

Democrats this morning laying the groundwork to do it without Republicans, if necessary. This morning, we do have brand-new details about where these negotiations stand.

Later today, President Biden will reinstate and expand coronavirus travel restrictions that President Trump tried to lift on his way out the door.

This morning, there is marked improvement on many of the pandemic metrics in the United States, but there is also major concern about the new variants. Health officials now say that we have to be open to the possibility that the U.K. variant is not only more transmissible, but also more deadly than previous strains.

CAMEROTA: And in just hours, the House of Representatives will deliver the article of impeachment against former President Trump to the Senate.

Mr. Trump's second impeachment trial is scheduled to start in two weeks, but the number of Republican senators opposing this trial is growing.

We're also learning stunning new details about how Mr. Trump tried to use the Department of Justice to overturn his election loss. So we have a lot to cover.

Let's begin with CNN's Lauren Fox, live on Capitol Hill -- Lauren.

LAUREN FOX, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, this morning, as the country continues to grapple with the effects of coronavirus, President Joe Biden trying to make good on that campaign promise to pass a massive new stimulus plan. And this time he's trying to get bipartisan support.

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FOX (voice-over): President Joe Biden forging ahead with his COVID-19 relief plan, attempting to pass his $1.9 trillion package with bipartisan help.

Sunday night, the president's team invited 16 senators from both sides of the aisle onto a call. One person on the call tells CNN a top priority is money for coronavirus vaccine distribution.

SEN. ANGUS KING (I-ME): We asked for more data. There were a lot of nerds on this call. And we want the backup. It's not going to be easy.

FOX: Republican Senator Susan Collins, who was on the call, has reservations, writing in a statement, quote, "It seems premature to be considering a package of this size and scope."

If Republicans don't get onboard with Biden's so-called American Rescue Plan, Senate Democrats may try to pass the Bill using a rare and controversial budget process.

SANDERS: That is 50 votes in the Senate plus the vice president to pass legislation desperately needed by working families in this country right now.

FOX: The Senate remains at a standstill as the debate over an organizing resolution is stalling Biden's legislative agenda. Democrats can't take full control of the Senate until an agreement is made, meaning Republicans will be chairing Biden's confirmation hearings until then.

The gridlock happening as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi prepares to deliver the articles of impeachment against former President Donald Trump to the Senate later today.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): I believe it will be a fair trial, but it will move relatively quickly.

FOX: Many Republicans speaking out against holding an impeachment trial for a former president.

RUBIO: I think the trial is stupid. I think it's counterproductive. We already have a flaming fire in this country, and it's like taking a bunch of gasoline and pouring it on top of the fire.

FOX: But not all Republicans agree.

ROMNEY: You'll find that the preponderance of the legal opinion is that an impeachment trial after someone has left office is constitutional.

What is being alleged and what we saw, which is incitement to insurrection, is -- is an impeachable offense. If not, what is?

FOX: House impeachment managers insist the integrity of the White House is at stake.

REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D-CA): The only time you would try and pull off a coup would be in your final hours in office. And so if you're not willing to hold someone accountable all the way to the last hour, then presidents would have this kind of, you know, free skip school day or, you know, a free get-out-of-jail-free card, because their conduct occurred in the last few weeks of their presidency.

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FOX: And we, of course, expect that this article of impeachment will be delivered to the Senate around 7 p.m. tonight. Senators then will be sworn in as jurors tomorrow. But this impeachment trial isn't going to get started until the week of February 8 -- John.

[06:05:14]

BERMAN: All right. Lauren Fox, up on Capitol Hill, thanks so much.

Joining us now, CNN White House reporter Jeremy Diamond and CNN political analyst Seung Min Kim. She's a White House reporter for "The Washington Post."

Seung Min, what did we learn out of this call between the White House officials and this bipartisan group of 16 senators? What did we learn and what does this tell us about where things are headed?

SEUNG MIN KIM, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": What we learned is that there are definitely certain points of obvious agreement between Republican senators, Democratic senators, and the Biden administration.

And one of the big points of agreement is that you do need immediate relief, immediate plans, more resources for vaccine distribution.

What senators have told us is that they really want to identify where those bottlenecks are in distribution. Why aren't vaccines getting out the door more quickly? And figure out ways to do that.

But what we also learned is that there are many parts of the Biden administration's $1.9 trillion package that even Democrats aren't too comfortable with.

Think about those $1,400 stimulus checks that have been such a big part of, you know, former President Trump's plan and also the Biden White House's plan. Both Democrats and Republicans on the call asked White House officials if those -- if that type of aid could be more targeted toward -- sent to people who could actually -- who actually need the money and not wealthy people.

They also urged the White House to actually defend and actually back up all their funding requests and just give them more answers on what has already gone out the door.

We also know that they didn't touch a lot of those really sticky issues that will determine whether a package can pass, such as, do we go smaller? Smaller than the nearly $2 trillion? Do we use the controversial process called reconciliation that Lauren just talked about earlier?

So this is certainly a first step, but a first step that both sides saw as a very good and productive one.

CAMEROTA: Jeremy, aren't those totally legitimate concerns? A more targeted Bill? So the money isn't going to people who don't need it or what have you? I mean, isn't that something that Democrats also can get their arms around? How -- how hard is this going to be to do that?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, one of the biggest pieces of criticism from even some of these moderate Republicans, who are -- who are on that call yesterday, eight Republicans, eight Democrats on a call with the top economic adviser for President Joe Biden, was the fact that just a few weeks ago, they passed a $900 billion coronavirus stimulus package.

And so now, to come back with an ask for $1.9 trillion may be too much for many of those Republicans and perhaps even some of those Democrats.

And ultimately, whether or not those concerns are legitimate, this is about whether or not this White House wants to pursue a bipartisan package. And so the choice that President Biden may soon have to face, just five days after he said that unity is the path forward in his inaugural address, is whether he wants a bipartisan package for the sake of bipartisanship that perhaps isn't what he was initially asking for, a much smaller package. Or whether he wants the substance of this $1.9 trillion package in its entirety and to push that forward through the reconciliation process.

But even that, if there are some Democrats who have some concerns, even reconciliation will require every single Democratic member of the Senate to get behind that. And if there are questions like Senator Joe Manchin, who was on that call yesterday. If he has qualms about pushing forward with a package of that size, that will also be problematic for this White House.

BERMAN: Seung Min, I think part of the calculation has to be this, which is, no matter how hard the White House tries to get Republicans onboard, the White House has to figure out if it's ever possible at all.

And I know that sounds like a stark choice here, but it's a reasonable thing to consider. If you think about Obamacare back in 2009, you know, the Obama White House worked for like a month to get Olympia Snowe onboard and couldn't do it, failed, ended up going with just Democrats.

So, you know, when will this White House decide whether or not they can even get a single Republican? And what's the calculation on the Republican side? Is there pressure just to oppose it, because it's a Democratic White House?

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, you bring up such an excellent point about the Obamacare debate back in 2009. If you recall, before the healthcare debate, the debate over the economic stimulus Bill, where the -- where the Obama administration tried to work with Republicans in Congress and only ended up getting three Republican Senate votes.

Certainly, the Biden White House doesn't want to replicate that. In an ideal world, they would get their big package with a lot of bipartisan support, but that doesn't seem to be likely right now.

So the question is, what are they willing to sacrifice from that big package in order to get Republican support? And you know, I spoke with Elizabeth Warren on the Hill last week. And she said, Look, if we want bipartisanship and if -- if

bipartisanship is the way to get the best results for the country, then I am all for it. But we are not going to let Republicans hold us back from delivering relief to the American people.

[06:10:09]

And so you're going to hear that coming from a lot of Democrats, coming from the left on Joe Biden, in the coming days and weeks. And you know, we're working on a very, you know, a tough timetable here.

They want to deliver this relief quickly. There is sort of a two-week window where the Senate is free to do work that's not the former president's impeachment trial. But there's a lot of moving parts here, and it's very unclear how fast they can get this done and how big it's ultimately going to be.

CAMEROTA: Jamie, I was reading that Rob Portman, Republican senator from Ohio, was saying that he didn't think the Biden administration had done enough outreach to Republicans. OK, they've been there four full days. I mean, is that unrealistic, or should -- should President Biden already have been working the phones to call Rob Portman?

DIAMOND: Well, look, there had been some question about whether President Biden would himself begin meeting with some of these senators. We do know that he has been on the phone with some Republican senators, perhaps not Rob Portman specifically.

But clearly, this White House is interested in this outreach. And that is kind of a notable thing, especially after four years of what we've seen from the previous president. Is that everybody on the call yesterday, on this bipartisan call, seems to think that the White House was genuine in its attempts at bipartisanship. This wasn't just some kind of empty fig leaf. It was something genuine that they were actually trying to achieve.

Now, again, this comes back to the question of whether or not they're going to be willing to continue to pursue this bipartisanship for weeks on end and even after the impeachment process. Or whether they're going to have a two-week timeline.

So far, when we've tried to ask the White House, how long is your timeline here? At what point do you say enough is enough with bipartisanship? Let's just get this Bill passed with Democrats alone?

They have refused to give that timeline thus far. And -- and again, push comes to shove. We'll have to see what President Biden does. But ultimately, this will set the tone for the rest of his presidency. And I think that's something that the White House is very aware of.

BERMAN: Did Rob Portman really say that? Talk about moving the bar here. Half the Republican Party or more won't even acknowledge that Joe Biden won until the middle of December.

CAMEROTA: But where's my phone call?

BERMAN: Exactly.

CAMEROTA: President Biden.

BERMAN: Why aren't you calling me to negotiate, even though I wouldn't recognize your legitimacy as president?

And Rob Portman who half mealy-mouthed pretended to acknowledge -- I mean, come on. That doesn't seem particularly fair, even if you have legitimate gripes about what's inside this Bill.

Jeremy Diamond, thank you very much.

Seung Min, don't go far.

New details about the former president's alleged plot to oust the acting attorney general to try to overturn the election loss. How will this factor into the impeachment trial? Next.

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[06:16:21]

CAMEROTA: We have brand-new details this morning about former President Trump's efforts to try to overturn President Biden's election win, including an alleged plot to fire the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, and replace him with a Justice Department lawyer who supported false claims about election fraud.

CNN's Jessica Schneider lays out all of the details.

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RICH FITZGERALD (D), ALLEGHENY COUNTY EXECUTIVE: The electors of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania have cast 20 votes for the honorable Joseph R. Biden.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: December 14 was when electors across the country cemented Joe Biden's place as president. But it also marked the day Donald Trump amped up his behind-the-scenes pressure campaign to overturn the results, both publicly and as we're now learning, privately, in an effort that almost prompted mass resignations at the Justice Department.

Hours after Trump announced Bill Barr's resignation, two weeks after Barr declared there was no evidence of widespread election fraud, the president summoned acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen to the White House, according to "The New York Times."

Trump wanted DOJ officials to file legal briefs supporting Republican efforts in court to overturn Biden's win. And "The Times" reports he urged Rosen to appoint special counsels to investigate the unfounded claims of election fraud and Dominion, the election's equipment company Trump falsely claimed changed votes in coordination with Venezuela.

Rosen refused, according to "The Times," but what Rosen didn't realize was that Trump had been introduced to the man heading up the civil division of the DOJ, Jeffrey Clark, and that Clark had told the president he agreed fraud had affected the election.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You can't ever accept when they steal and rig and rob.

SCHNEIDER: The president was fixated on Georgia, and Jeffrey Clark was ready to rally with Trump behind the scenes. Clark reportedly drafted a letter to Georgia state legislatures that incorrectly said DOJ was investigating accusations of voter fraud in the state and that Georgia officials should invalidate Biden's win.

Top DOJ officials told Clark he was wrong and rejected Clark's request that DOJ hold a press conference announcing an investigation into voter fraud, according to "The Times."

Clark then met with Trump the weekend of January 2. And after the meeting, Clark informed Rosen, Trump was going to fire the acting attorney general, and Clark would take over, according to "The Times."

Clark denied calculating a plan to oust Rosen to "The Times" and said his conversations with the president were above board: "All my official communications were consistent with law. There was a candid discussion of options and pros and cons with the president. It is unfortunate that those who were part of a privileged legal conversation would comment in public, while also distorting any discussions."

But before Rosen could even react to what was unraveling, Clark's demands and his reported claims that the president would soon fire Rosen, tape of Trump's pressure campaign on Georgia's secretary of state got out.

TRUMP: So, look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.

SCHNEIDER: Trump tore into Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for more than an hour, even though Raffensperger and his general counsel insisted Georgia's numbers were accurate, especially after three recounts.

TRUMP: You should want to have an accurate election. And you're a Republican.

BRAD RAFFENSBERGER (R), GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE: We believe that we do have an accurate election.

TRUMP: No, I -- no, you don't. No. No, you don't. You don't have -- you don't have. Not even close. You guys, you're off by hundreds of thousands of votes.

[06:20:09]

SCHNEIDER: After the call came out, Rosen's deputy, Richard Donohue, let several senior Justice Department officials in on what was happening, according to "The Times." Sources tell CNN they all agreed, including Trump's own Senate-confirmed appointees, that if Trump fired Rosen, they would all resign in protest.

On Sunday night, January 3 at 6 p.m., Jeffrey Rosen, Richard Donohue, and the DOJ official doing the president's bidding, Jeffrey Clark, met at the White House with Trump, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and other lawyers. "The Times" reports Rosen and Clark laid out their arguments as if they were contestants on Trump's long-running reality show, "The Apprentice." Rosen arguing that there was no fraud to investigate, Clark urging the president to move forward with his plans to fight the results and fire Rosen.

Pat Cipollone advised the president not to fire Rosen, according to "The Times," and Trump was warned that several top DOJ officials would resign if he fired the acting A.G.

It took several hours, sources tell CNN, but eventually, Trump was swayed that the resulting chaos at DOJ wasn't worth eliminating Rosen. But the damning details now emerging of a constitutional crisis averted are adding to Democrats' calls that the president needs to be convicted in the Senate.

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): The president was actually actively trying to take out his own attorney general and put in an unknown bureaucrat, conspiring with him. I think we're going to get more and more evidence over the next few weeks, as if it's not enough that he sent an angry mob down the Mall to invade the Capitol.

SCHNEIDER: Incoming Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin says his committee is investigating Trump's reported plans to fire Rosen and rely on Clark to further his claims of fraud. And Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling on DOJ's inspector general to investigate what Schumer calls more attempted sedition.

SCHUMER: What happened was just despicable. For the president to try and get an attorney general who will just totally lie about the results of the election and cause chaos in America.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER: Now, House impeachment manager David Cicilline, he was asked if he believed Jeffrey Rosen or Jeffrey Clark should be called as witnesses in the upcoming impeachment trial, but he would not say.

In the meantime, we do know that the DOJ inspector general has already opened an investigation into whether Trump administration officials improperly pressured the former U.S. attorney in Georgia, B.J. Pak, to investigate the election.

Now, Pak abruptly resigned earlier this month, and he said it was due to unforeseen circumstances. I have reached out to Pak. He is declining to comment.

But as these details continue to drip out about the president's pressure campaign, it is sure to have Democrats digging in on those calls to not only convict the president but also to bar him from holding any future office -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh, Jessica. Just great reporting. Thank you very much. Please keep us posted with any more developments.

So back with us now, we have Seung Min Kim. Also joining us, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig. He's a former federal prosecutor.

Elie, as we get more information, as the smoke clears, every day you can realize just how much closer democracy was to breaking than we knew previously. I mean, how one spineless, I guess, easily-duped sycophant could have changed, perhaps, the course of what happened.

And how -- I mean, the guardrails -- the guardrails were supposed to keep this from happening, but we've learned that they are rickety. And then people like Raffensperger and, you know, Gabriel Sterling had to step in and stop some of this madness.

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It's true, Alisyn. There's really sort of two levels of crazy here.

The first one is that Donald Trump, after three years and 11 months in office, still thought that it was OK for him to interfere with DOJ; to use DOJ like his own personal lawyers run amok.

And good for those lawyers within DOJ who were not sycophants, who stood up and said, No, we're going to resign en masse, who prevented this from happening. They stood up for the independence of DOJ, and I applaud that.

The second level of crazy is, this never would have worked. Because you can't -- as much as a prosecutor has a lot of power, a lot of discretion, you can't make something out of nothing. As a prosecutor, you can't just start bringing charges of election fraud with zero evidence. And maybe this guy, Clark, would have written a letter to the Georgia legislature, but a letter from DOJ has no real binding impact.

But you're exactly right. This is yet another example of abuse of power, and I'm proud as a DOJ alum, that the right people there stood up and said "no".

BERMAN: One more legal question, because I know Alisyn wants to walk down the Rubio path in a moment, I think, with Seung Min. The well- worn Rubio path. But Elie, does any of this, as terrifying as it is, how does it factor into the impeachment trial in the Senate? Do you think it is evidence of anything that's truly important that was not already known?

[06:25:11]

I do, John. And if you look at the article of impeachment that will be delivered over to the Senate later today, it was very well-crafted. Because the main focus, of course, is on the events of January 6. But there is a paragraph in that article that specifically says, this is about more than just January 6. It's about the run-up to January 6 and the president's prolonged effort to steal this election. And that's sort of a prosecutorial tactic, where you want to make sure

that you give the jury, whether it's a trial jury or the Senate or the U.S. public, the whole story. And not just the end. And I think what happened on January 6 is a natural culmination and inevitable outcome of that whole effort. And these stories, I think, are absolutely part of that.

CAMEROTA: OK. Let's talk about January 6 and who's going to be held accountable and what ended up happening. Because similarly, Seung Min, with this, we also learned new details, new horrifying details every day. And the investigation is far from complete, but we do know that President Trump was MIA during it, as people were calling for their lives, begging them to send backup. They couldn't get ahold of him. The reporting is he was watching it on TV.

But somehow, senators like Marco Rubio now feel like, You know what? What -- it's ancient history. It was almost three weeks ago, you know. We don't need to have any Senate trial. So here is Marco Rubio yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUBIO: I think the trial is stupid. I think it's counterproductive. We already have a flaming fire in this country, and it's like taking a bunch of gasoline and pouring it on top of the fire.

CHUCK TODD, HOST, NBC'S "MEET THE PRESS": Do you believe Donald Trump committed an impeachable offense?

SEN. MIKE ROUNDS (R-SD): To begin with, I think it's a moot point. Because I think right now Donald Trump is no longer the president. He is a former president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK, Seung Min, it's about accountability. It's about getting answers, as one does during a trial. And that's how Marco Rubio felt very, very strongly when a marauding mob killed four Americans, as opposed to five Americans, back in 2012 in Benghazi. Here he is then.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUBIO: This is not about politics. This is about accountability. Somebody needs to be held accountable for what's happened here. But it's also about preventing this from happening in the future. This is not about hurting anybody politically. This is about getting to the truth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Great. When Congress asks questions, it's about getting to the truth. It's about accountability. So what's changed?

KIM: I think the -- this is the political parties of -- the one who's trying to be held accountable has perhaps changed. But you've heard this theme of unity -- unity a lot from Republicans,

citing that as a reason why they want to move on from the -- from the impeachment trial, dismiss it outright, dismiss the charges.

But at the same time, these are, you know -- many in the Republican Party can't forget, objected, even after that -- even after that horrific siege at the Capitol, you know, a majority of House Republicans and a small handful of Senate Republicans still continued to contest the results; still continued to, you know, promote this baseless claim that the election results were somewhat -- were somewhat questionable. And that in itself is not unifying, I think, a lot of people would argue.

But at the same time, I think the timing for the impeachment trial is important here. I think that there's a sense on Capitol Hill, just talking with Republican sources, that the more time passes between January 6 and the impeachment trial, the passions have cooled a little bit. And that there's a little less anger, as time goes by. There's a little less of a willingness on Republican -- on the Republicans' part to convict right away.

So we can -- as we've said for the last several weeks, you know, you can perhaps count to five, maybe seven Senate Republicans who would be open to convicting former President Trump, but it is really difficult to get to 17 right now and maybe, you know, even in two weeks.

CAMEROTA: I mean, it's just -- the whole timeline thing is just so crazy. That whole Marco Rubio bite that we just played, that was nine months after Benghazi. It hasn't been three weeks since the siege on Capitol Hill. But they're ready to move on, and so are we.

Seung Min, Elie, thank you both very, very much.

HONIG: Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: U.S. public health officials say they are in a race against time to ramp up vaccinations before the new coronavirus variants spread even more. We'll break down exactly where things stand, next.

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