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New Day

Soon, House Impeachment Managers Finish Presenting Their Case; Georgia Prosecutors Open Criminal Probe into Trump Call to Overturn Election; CNN Reports, Biden Administration Not Where They Want to Be In Genetic Sequencing Variants. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired February 11, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: The 400-pound lineman could.

[07:00:01]

He was known --

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: Okay, well, something is (INAUDIBLE).

BERMAN: Even that, he was known.

CAMEROTA: He is hammered (ph).

BERMAN: Well, he lost those skills apparently overtime.

All right, Coy, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

New Day continues right now.

CAMEROTA: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day.

It is day three of Donald Trump's second impeachment trial and it will begin soon with the House impeachment managers concluding their opening arguments. They will have eight hours to show new evidence, more evidence to Senate jurors of how President Trump incited the deadly insurrection at the Capitol.

They've already revealed a series of never-before-seen videos like this one, where, for the first time, the American people see Vice President Mike Pence and his family fleeing the Senate chamber moments before it was breached.

Senator Tommy Tuberville confirms overnight that he was on the phone with President Trump at that very moment. He told President Trump on the phone that Mike Pence was being evacuated and still, Donald Trump did nothing to try to stop the mayhem.

BERMAN: Senators watch video of Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker Pelosi's staff running to hide from the mob moments before the insurrectionist tried to break down their door. Senators Mitt Romney, Chuck Schumer also seen on surveillance video, we had never seen this before, narrowly escaping the mob. We have new reaction from the senators this morning. We also have new reporting on what the House managers intend to present today. You can expect them to offer something of a prebuttal to the former president's defense. What exactly will that be?

CAMEROTA: Okay. Joining us now, CNN National Security Commentator and former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, and CNN Legal Analyst Norm Eisen, he served as counsel for the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee during President Trump's first impeachment. Gentlemen, great to see both of you.

Ambassador Eisen, what was accomplished yesterday?

NORMAN EISEN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Alisyn, good morning. It was powerful. The -- we talked before the trial that the American people thought they knew what happened, but they really didn't, and the managers showed that yesterday. Surprise is the key to successful trial preparation, and they had it, the video of Mike Pence evacuating, seeing just how -- using those parallel maps to show just how close he came to danger.

I was chilled by other video of the staff having to hide in Nancy Pelosi's office, how close the insurrectionists came to them. They used the video of police officers. These are all sympathetic figures, not just to the jury in the Senate but to the American people, the police, the vice president, staff.

And it -- and then at the end, the kicker, after the dinner break, they brought -- we've seen the whole story, the insurrection built up for months by Donald Trump, then they brought him in and his startling inaction in the embrace of the insurrectionists. We love you, he said to these insurrectionists after they had committed such violence, five deaths. It was a powerful, powerful day.

BERMAN: Which brings me to sort of where we are right now, Chairman Rogers. And Punchbowl News this morning, I think, frames the question in an interesting way. It flips sort of the former president's defense argument right now. What Punchbowl asked this morning is, after everything we've now seen now going forward, make the argument that Donald Trump had nothing to do with the riot at the Capitol.

How could you make the argument after everything we just saw that he had nothing to do with that insurrection?

MIKE ROGERS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY COMMENTATOR: Yes. Well, if you're asking me to make Donald Trump's argument that he had nothing to do with it, you won't find a sympathetic voice here. I mean, it was powerful.

I mean, the fact that our country came to the place where people thought violence and trying to overthrow the certification of an election was even an option tells you how far we've come and how much work we have to do to bring us all back together. I think they made a pretty powerful case up in the last couple of days.

I will say, let me put my FBI hat on for a minute, they have to show -- I think the prosecution has to show that the president incited it, that you should not in America convict somebody on emotion. And I don't care if it's somebody you like or don't like. That's a really important principle in law.

I would like to see today, if they're going to make that case, that they actually tie the president to the incitement of the riots, if that's what they're -- if that's their case. Making it solely on emotion, that's not just good for the long-term haul of American justice.

BERMAN: So, Norm, can I ask you --

ROGERS: They have the chance to make that case today.

BERMAN: Well, Norm, to that question, have they made that case, Ambassador? And if not, how do they make it even stronger?

EISEN: Well, Chairman Rogers, of course, is looking forward to additional evidence today.

[07:05:04]

But I thought they did make the case. They went beyond the initial motion argument on Tuesday. And yesterday, we saw, number one, not just Trump's words on January 6th, as bad as they were, but months of him telling Americans, many of whom are patriotic but misled by him, their democracy had been stolen. An election had been stolen. Well, of course, those Americans were whipped into a frenzy by the time we got to January 6th.

Then we saw the January 6th video, Trump saying, fight, more than 20 times in that speech, and saying, if you don't fight for your country, you won't have one left. Let's go down Pennsylvania Avenue. And then the horrific images of the riot and then the kicker at the end of the day, Trump's inaction, his callousness, his embrace of the rioters.

Short of having Trump appear, which they've asked for, and they won't do it, I think they've made a very, very compelling case. And at this point, any senator who fails to convict will see the rest of the evidence today. But any senator who fails to convict, they're in the dock and they're going to be judged right next to Donald Trump on this evidentiary record.

CAMEROTA: Well, we're not just sure how much it matters to them right now, Chairman. Senator Lindsey Graham talked about how he's feeling. He thinks that the number of Republicans has flipped in Donald Trump's favor. Listen to what he said yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): The not guilty vote is growing after today. I think most Republicans found the presentation by the House managers offensive and absurd. We all know what happened at the Capitol was terrible. I hope everybody involved that broke into the Capitol goes to jail. But I don't remember any of these House managers saying a damn thing when they were trying to break into my House and going after Susan Collins and spitting on all of us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Yes, I mean, Trump supporters spit on journalists too, but that's not the same as an armed insurrection at the Capitol.

I just want to play one more thing. This is how Senator Lindsey Graham felt about the riotous mob in Benghazi two years after four Americans were killed there. This is how he felt then.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRAHAM (voice over): It would be almost impossible for Lindsey Graham, given who I am and what I've been doing for the last 20 years, not to care about those in harm's way, who get killed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: So, he cared then about people in harm's way, but now a month after the Capitol insurrection, Chairman Rogers, he thinks it's absurd?

ROGERS: Yes. Listen, I think emotions are running very, very high. Remember, the nature of an impeachment is political by nature. It is still a trial. And I take the ambassador's point that the -- listen, it was a powerful case up to this point, but they have more evidence to present. I believe that. I think they do have to make that tie stronger if you're going to get a conviction vote or if you're going to get the Republicans to vote for conviction.

But this is my point on all of this. My mother you'd to say, Alisyn, that your free speech ends at the end of your fist touching the beginning of my nose. And if you think about what's happening here, now, there are people who are going in their corner saying, well, our violence is different than your violence. No, violence to any political aim is wrong. And if we can't agree on that in the United States, we have really big problems ahead of us.

And so, we're going to have to get through this. We're going to have to get through the trial. I think members need to vote on their conscience, what they believe at the end of the presentation of the evidence. Did the prosecution make the case that the president incited violence? They have to make that case. I think they're going to have to do it today in order for that to happen. And guess what, the defense gets their time in court, as they should, in an American democracy.

And so I don't know. I am as frustrated as ever. I think what happened there was just absolutely abhorrent that people believed that that was the only way they could express themselves politically. And I think others had even more sinister motives showing up at the Capitol. And we have got to stop this. And we've got to stop kind of going to our corners and start beginning to heal these wounds.

America is a really important country in the world. And what we have here is the envy of the world. And to put on display the fact that we're going to go tribal on these kinds of things is just wrong. And we need to shake ourselves out of it. And we need to shake ourselves out of the notion that one person has this much power over everybody. And I'm talking about the left and the right. You can't even have a conversation and use that person's name without an enflamed conversation and people having very passionate feelings. We have to move beyond this.

So let's do this. I'm going to encourage all the senators to vote on their conscience.

[07:10:00]

Do you believe the president of the United States helped incite the violence and tried to overturn a free election in the United States? If that answer is, yes, after today, then I think you have to vote for impeachment. If they didn't make the case, that's -- you know, listen, that's okay too. In America, we have trials and it needs to be fair. Lady Justice needs to be a little blind, even given the political environment of an impeachment.

BERMAN: Look, whatever legal argument Lindsey Graham may or may not have been making there, he's just wrong. You mean what he said was a lie about what most Republican senators felt yesterday. Every Republican senator we heard from, not a single one, was offended by the argument made by the House --

CAMEROTA: That sounded absurd. I mean, that's even worse.

BERMAN: It's not at all what happened. Now, they may not think that it convinced them to vote to convict, but no one besides Lindsey Graham in his fantasy world, which seems to be growing bigger and bigger, no one besides him thinks that.

Ambassador Eisen, something else that the House manager did yesterday, I'm very curious to see how this plays going forward, and this may be for the historical record, as much as it is for the actual vote, is they set up a dichotomy between the former Vice President Mike Pence and the former U.S. president. They really told these Republican senators, you have a choice here. You can see what happened, to your friend, by the way, Mike Pence. So are you going to vote for him, for his life or the former president?

EISEN: That's exactly right, John. As the chairman says, the managers have got to convince the senators and they used Mike Pence, someone they know, they like well. He just finished his term as the president of the Senate and they've known him for decades. They used him in that chilling video we're seeing.

And look at how Mike Pence looks back at one point. He wants to see if his family -- we've heard a lot about Raskin's family's also with him -- is his family safe? They used that to get the sympathies of the senators. Lindsey Graham went on Fox last night and lied because he's one of the sole defenders out there about the effect that this trial is having. It is shaking the Republican senators.

But I do want to say one thing. Let's have no false symmetry here. Yes, there are problems on both sides, but there is only one leader who sent his followers into the Capitol to attack his own government. He incited insurrection and there's an asymmetry. There is a much big problem. There is a cancer on the right.

And when these senators, as they -- many of them probably will, uphold their allegiance to Donald Trump instead of their oath to the Constitution and their pledge to the United States, that is an asymmetrical dysfunction in our country. And that has to be honestly addressed. This is not a balanced problem.

And this trial is the beginning of doing that, because there will be criminal investigations of Donald Trump, including for the Raffensperger call. There will be civil suits. There will be other opportunities for accountability. That's why the managers aren't just talking to the senators. They know the imbalance there. They're talking to the American people and to others who will bring accountability.

BERMAN: Ambassador Eisen, Mike Rogers, thank you very much. That tees us up perfectly for our next discussion. Because everything we've discussed so far is about the impeachment peril, the political peril for the former president. But this morning, he is in new legal jeopardy, a new investigation in Georgia, new details about whether this turns into criminal charges, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

CAMEROTA: Well, House impeachment managers are making their case in the political trial of Donald Trump, one Georgia district attorney just announced a criminal

investigation into Mr. Trump and his efforts to overturn the election results. This is based on that phone call from the former president to Georgia's Republican secretary of state.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT (voice over): 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.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Okay. Joining us now is Greg Bluestein, he's a Political Reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Greg, great to see you.

So what is the Fulton County district attorney looking at with this phone call, beyond this phone call?

GREG BLUESTEIN, POLITICAL REPORTER, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: Yes. This was an extraordinary step by the local prosecutor, and it looks like it's going to be a far-reaching criminal probe because it does involve the phone call, which he's also looking into all sorts of other potential violations, election fraud, false statements, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office. And she sent these letters to preserve documents, not only to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, but also to Governor Brian Kemp, Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan, and Attorney General Chris Carr, all seeking to preserve documents that could be essential for her investigation going forward.

CAMEROTA: I was struck by that litany of possible charges, as you just laid out. Racketeering? I mean, how does that phone call play into a possible racketeering charge?

BLUESTEIN: Well, it's not just that phone call that she's looking at, although that will be the most attention-grabbing part of the investigation. You know, we've uncovered evidence that the president has directly pressured the governor repeatedly to call a special session to overturn the election results.

There was a hearing in the state senate what the Trump attorney, Rudy Giuliani, promoted false conspiracy theories and spread more lies about the election results. That's why Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan, who presides over the Senate, is involved in this. They're not direct targets, by the way. They're just being asked to hand over documents, preserve documents, in case they become useful for the investigation.

But this is going to be beyond that phone call.

CAMEROTA: And so this district attorney is new, correct? Fani Willis, recently elected, and she calls this a matter of high priority for her.

[07:20:04]

So what do we know about her?

BLUESTEIN: Yes, she's newly elected. She actually defeated her former boss, Paul Howard, who is a district attorney in Fulton County, the state's largest county, most populous county for decades. And when she ran for election, she pledged to beef up the public integrity unit to restore faith in government and to tackle corruption. And so she says by pursuing this investigation, she's living up to her campaign promises.

CAMEROTA: There has been a response from one of President Trump's spokespeople and advisers, Jason Miller. He says, the timing here is not accidental, given today's impeachment trial. This is simply the Democrats' latest attempt to score political points by continuing their witch hunt against President Trump and everybody sees through it.

Let's talk about the timing and about the response. Has she given a response to that? And what do we think of the timing right now?

BLUESTEIN: Yes, that echoes other Republicans, especially here in Georgia, who have said the same thing, that it was meant to damage the president at a very precarious moment for him. She spoke to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution yesterday and said she's going into this impartial. She wants to see the evidence and that the timing wasn't meant to disrupt the impeachment hearings.

And, certainly, we know that she's been talking about this, that she's been looking at making this step for weeks now, pretty much ever since the aftermath of that phone call.

CAMEROTA: So, if, let's say, Donald Trump is charged with this, and let's say he's convicted, can he be pardoned by the governor?

BLUESTEIN: Yes, that's a good question. The governor in Georgia does not have that direct power to pardon anyone convicted of a crime. Instead, there is a five-member board of pardons and paroles in Georgia, which he appointed members over the years. Most of the members are from previous administrations right now, but they will have the power if that meets the guidelines. There are all sorts of statutory guidelines set out by the state code of Georgia in order to pardon someone. But it's actually that five-member board of pardons and paroles that has that power, not the governor directly.

CAMEROTA: I mean, we've all heard that damning phone call. But beyond that in terms of all the other charges she's looking into, do you have a sense yet from legal experts about how hard a case this would be?

BLUESTEIN: The legal experts we talked to say with the evidence and the phone call, the recording that half the world has heard by now, that that will make that case a lot easier, because there is that recording. It looks like there's a clear cause.

You know, again, this is all going to be litigated in courts and challenged by Trump attorneys too, if it ever gets that far. But the legal experts we've talked to say that the Fulton County district attorney has a clear case going forward.

CAMEROTA: Greg Bluestein, thank you very much for all of the reporting. Please keep us posted on what's happening in Georgia.

BLUESTEIN: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: So the spread of these new variants and coronavirus fatigue among Americans are both major concerns for the White House. What they're doing to fight that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:25:00]

BERMAN: New this morning, we're hearing concern from inside the White House that the spread of the coronavirus variants is threatening the timeline for beating back the pandemic.

CNN's M.J. Lee joins us now with this new reporting. M.J., what have you learned?

M.J. LEE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, one of the biggest obstacles to the Biden administration trying to get this pandemic under control are these COVID variants that are popping up across this country. And the reality right now is that the administration is not where it would like to be in terms of tracking these mutations. One Biden administration official telling CNN, we are not where we want to be in terms of genetic sequencing, although we are ramping up, we are starting way behind.

Now, genetic sequencing is just a really important way for them to study, to find, and track these mutations. And the administration, remember, has already said the U.K. variant is becoming more widespread in the U.S. and that it could actually become the dominant strain in a matter of weeks.

As for the South Africa variant, they have said, we are probably underestimating how many cases there are across the country, because we are not being fast enough in terms of the genetic sequencing and tracking of these variants.

So the concern right now is if you have these variants across the country and some of them might be less susceptible to the vaccines and could be more contagious, then if you're not able to track them, if you're not able to study them properly and know where they are, that could potentially erase some of the progress and the positive numbers that we have seen over the last couple of weeks. And this is why it is so important for the administration, it feels, to ramp up the genetic sequencing and the tracking.

I will also finally say one major, major concern for the administration right now, as well, is virus fatigue. They know that we are a year into this thing. They understand that there are plenty of Americans who are just getting sick of doing basic things, like wearing masks and social distancing and all of these basic steps are so key to stopping the spread of the variants in addition to, of course, getting the vaccines when it is your turn.

BERMAN: That's right, there are things you can do that will save lives. M.J. Lee, thank you so much.

On that front, new guidance from the CDC says that double masking, wearing two masks can significantly improve protection against coronavirus.

Joining us now, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, I've been asking you about double masking for a while now. I asked Dr. Fauci about it a few weeks ago. And now we have this data. This can save lives. I mean, this is something that has a real impact.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John, I don't know if you can hear me. The signal is a little -- I may have lost you there for a second. But, yes, this is one of those things where I think it's, in part, common sense, right?

[07:30:01]

We can put up the numbers here and actually show you how much of an impact double masking can have but also, you know, simply making sure that.