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National Guard Troops Provide Increased Security In Washington, D.C. Ahead Of Inauguration Of President-Elect Joe Biden; Some In President Trump's Inner Circle Reportedly Charging For Lobbying President To Issue Pardons In Last Days Of Presidency; Shocking Video Inside The Insurrection At U.S. Capitol. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired January 18, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Look at these photos of the National Mall from Sunday. This is typically a viewing area for presidential inaugurations. On any Sunday when the sun is out like that, the mall would be filled, even in the winter. But it's just completely empty because it's closed to the public this week.

We have learned that all of the 25,000 National Guard troops being deployed to Washington are being vetted because of concern about the possibility of an insider attack the FBI screening. We have this disturbing new video of the invasion of the Capitol, stunning images that reveal what the terrorists were doing, who they were after, and just what inspired them.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And this morning, CNN has learned that President Trump is preparing to issue roughly 100 pardons and commutations tomorrow, his final day in office. The list includes white collar criminals and some high-profile rappers. At the moment it does not appear that Mr. Trump will pardon himself and his family members, but there are still many hours left.

We also have new details about the executive orders that President- elect Biden plans to issue on day one. So let's start with CNN Pete Muntean. He is live in Washington with our top story. How does it look, Pete?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. Things here in Washington get more and more restricted by the minute. In fact, this is about as close as one can get to the capitol on foot right now. You can see one of the dozens of road blocks being set up here, staffed by members of the U.S. National Guard.

There are 21,000 members of the Guard here in Washington right now, that number to go up to 25,000 by inauguration day, and the Guard tells us that it will work with the FBI to vet those soldiers coming in from out of state. It's the National Park Service that oversees the National Mall and it says that it is being cleared out right now. All of these steps being taken are unprecedented for Inauguration Day. Here's what they said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MIKE LITTERST, CHIEF SPOKESMAN, NATIONAL MALL AND MEMORIAL PARKS: There's nobody there. And that's not the business that the Park Service is in. We're in the business of welcoming people and providing access to these sites. So I think when the 20th gets here and there are few, if any, people around, I think it is going to be unfortunate, but it is being done to guarantee that the constitutional mandate of a peaceful transfer of power on January 20th takes place.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

MUNTEAN: It will only get harder and harder to get to Washington D.C., 13 metro stages are now closed here. Bridges from Virginia into D.C. will close starting tomorrow morning through Inauguration Day. And the FAA is further restricting the already very restricted airspace around D.C., preventing non-commercial flights from flying in here. This is going to an Inauguration Day like no other, John.

BERMAN: No question about that. Pete Muntean, thank you so much for being on the streets for us. Please keep us posted.

Joining us now, CNN White House correspondent John Harwood, and Ken Vogel with "The New York Times." And Ken, you're here because of your remarkable reporting over the last 24 hours about what has been going on behind the scenes with pardons. Just to set the stage here, CNN is reporting that over the next 24 hours, we could see as many as 100 pardons and commutations.

Right now, as of this second, the president doesn't seem to pardon himself, but I wouldn't bet your life on that. Your reporting is on a different angle of this. It's on what has been going on behind the scenes by people connected to people in Trump's orbit to get these pardons. So what have you learned?

KEN VOGEL, REPORTER, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Well, you have a couple factors here, John, that are playing into this robust and booming market for pardon lobbying. Number one is that Trump has largely rested control of the pardon process away from the Justice Department, which has in almost every other presidency largely overseeing the process, vetting and identifying people who are worthy of pardons or commutations. Instead, Trump has brought this process into the White House, and it is a relatively small circle, the White House Counsel's Office, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who are overseeing this process.

And Trump also has this long history in office of really a transactional approach to governing, where he is going to reward his friend, his allies, his family members, or people who are advocated for by those people. So that has created a rush by people seeking pardons and commutations to get someone who could put their request right in front of the president. And some of these people, some of these allies of the president, are charging tens of thousands of dollars and potentially much more in order to go and lobby and advocate for these pardons and commutation-seekers.

CAMEROTA: Give us a little more color, Ken, about this. So John Dowd, former personal attorney, is apparently in on the take here, and Rudy Giuliani, I think, is asking a king's ransom for some of these things. Is this legal? And how much are they getting?

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VOGEL: Well, the short answer is, we don't know how much they're getting because there are very few disclosure requirements or rules around the pardon process. The president, it's one of the unchecked powers that he has that there are few restrictions on, and that extends to disclosure requirements.

They're not allowed disclosure requirements. If you are a lawyer who is representing someone who is seeking a pardon, you are advocating for that person before the president, so in the case of John Dowd, it's a little unsure, both John Dowd and Rudy Giuliani, it's interesting because these people actually representing President Trump, in the case of both of them in the Mueller investigation, in the case of Rudy Giuliani also in the first impeachment and potentially maybe the second impeachment.

And so they're kind of working both side, at least in the case of Dowd, who we understand accepted tens of thousands of dollars from this former professional gambler who was convicted of insider trading is now seek a pardon. Rudy Giuliani says that he is not involved in this pardon process, though we have an associate of his offering to get a pardon for a former CIA employee who was convicted of leaking classified information.

This associate, this former CIA employee said that a Giuliani associate said that Giuliani could help for $2 million. Yet a part of Giuliani says no, totally untrue. He's not in the pardon business, and everyone around him knows that, and it's because he sees it as a potential conflict of interest between his role as the president's lawyer and someone who might be pleading a case before the president.

BERMAN: I'll tell you, fill in the swamp. It's good work if you can get it. A lot of money handed out to fill the swamp right now.

John Harwood, it is interesting, as we sit here today with 50-ish, I guess what is the math, 52 hours left until Joe Biden takes the oath of office. The president, Donald Trump, will fill some of that time with these pardons. But the specter of the Senate trial has to be hanging over him. And I do think it will color what decisions he makes about pardoning himself, maybe Don, Jr., Rudy Giuliani, people, if he does pardon could hurt him in the Senate trial.

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, I think you've identified the key variable, and it's the one Ken pointed to a moment ago when he talked about Donald Trump being transactional. That is all Donald Trump is. What makes Donald Trump and this pardon situation different from previous presidents -- there is always lobbying for pardons at the end of a presidential term. But there are two guardrails that tend to apply. One is the pardon process through the Justice Department, and the second is, the president's sense of right and wrong, shame, morality in applying this. There is an interaction of those two things.

With Donald Trump, neither of those two things apply. Right and wrong does not figure into his calculations. What figures into his calculations are his own self-interests. So we've seen the pardons he has issued already. He sought to protect himself by pardoning people who may know things related to the Russia investigation, people like Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, all those people who were prosecuted pursuant to the Mueller investigation, Donald Trump has cleared them, having dangled those pardons before.

We saw, interestingly, over the weekend, the president and his administration trying to burrow in a former Devin Nunes aide as the top lawyer at the National Security Agency. Devin Nunes, of course, tried to thwart the Russia investigation. Again, Donald Trump taking an action that might have some consequences of benefiting himself.

So the Senate trial, if Donald Trump thinks that pardoning himself would heighten the chances of being convicted in the Senate, that's a reason for him not to do it, in addition to the fact that many lawyers think it wouldn't stick.

So all of those things are swirling around in Donald Trump's head, the same with his children. But again, what is going to determine Donald Trump's decision is not propriety, it's not morality. It's going to be his perception of what benefits him the most as he prepares to leave the presidency, face legal jeopardy as well as financial jeopardy.

CAMEROTA: John, I also want to ask you about some of "Axios's" new reporting. They talk about President Trump in the Oval Office, and some of his lawyers, meaning Sidney Powell calling, and what happens when she calls. She has been a grand conspiracy theorist, as we know, saying just completely cockamamy things out loud, and President Trump knows it. And so "Axios" report that he puts her on speaker phone for the entertainment of whoever else is in the room, and says, like, he thinks she is stone cold crazy. And he tells the crowd that.

[08:10:00]

But then he takes her off speaker phone and says, what are you going to do about it, Sidney? This multi-national corruption scheme that stole the election, what are you going to do about it? Puts himself on mute again and talks about how crazy she is, ginning her up, and then acting in public as though he's going along with all of that. And then of course it leads right to QAnon, as well. That's quite a window into what he has been doing over the past weeks.

HARWOOD: Well, as the funnel has narrowed on the end of Donald Trump's presidency, he has increasingly been isolated in confining himself to the company, to the conversation of people who are as crazy as he is. Sidney Powell is one of them, and he may take some ironic pleasure in saying, oh, look how crazy she is. She's on the phone with him.

Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy, was in the White House with him on Friday, and the president may have only given him five minutes, but these are the kind of people, Rudy Giuliani as well, who's been spouting these utterly insane conspiracy theories about the election since November 3rd, that's what Donald Trump's circle is now.

The people who have the capacity to act with wisdom and reason and rationality have almost entirely fled. There may be a couple. Maybe Pat Cipollone, the White House Counsel, is exerting some control of the president. But this is the world of Donald Trump. It's the world that we saw on January 6th. And it's the world that he is going to walk out of the White House with in a couple of days.

CAMEROTA: Gentleman, Ken, John, thank you both very much for all of the reporting.

We have some incredible newly-released video to show you inside the siege of the U.S. Capitol. How it will help authorities track down the Trump supporters in this violent mob, and just what they were saying and doing when they were in there.

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[08:15:43]

CAMEROTA: This morning we have newly released video to show you -- it's been put out by "The New Yorker." It captures the mob of Trump supporters marauding through the Capitol looking for lawmakers. "The Washington Post" reports that the extremists were minutes away from reaching Vice President Mike Pence.

We want to warn you the video is of course disturbing and we have not censored the foul language because we want you to see this in its full meaning. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're outnumbered. There's a fucking millions of us out there and we are listening to Trump -- your boss.

Let the people in.

It ain't safe for you guys.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We love you, guys. Take it easy.

CROWD: (Chanting "Treason.")

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Defend your liberty. Defend your Constitution.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 1776.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're afraid of Antifa? Well, guess what? America showed up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Knock, knock. We're here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is this the Senate?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where the fuck are there? Where are they?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: While we're here, we might as well set up a government.

CROWD: (Chanting "Treason.")

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, let's take a seat, people. Let's take a seat.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where is Nancy Pelosi?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where the fuck is Nancy?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, get out of that chair.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, this is our chair.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get out of that chair.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, this is our chair.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I agree with you, brother, but it is not ours. It belongs to the Vice President of the United States when he is in here. It is not our chair. Look, I love you, guys. You're brothers, but we can't be disrespectful.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, don't disrespect.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They can steal an election, but we can't sit in their chairs?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. We are not putting up with that either. It's a PR war, okay. You have to understand it. It's IO war, we can't lose the IO war.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, we're better than that. We're better than that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... information. Information Operation. You can't do it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... let's get a snap of that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I took a picture --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, how did you get down there?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go down the stairs.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look here, look.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ted Cruz's objection to the Arizona --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Objection. He was going to sell us out all along.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Really?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look. Objection to counting electoral votes on the State of Arizona. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can I get a photo of that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, that's a good thing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Okay. All right, all right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's got to be something in here we can fucking use against these scumbags.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, we're not going to fold. This is a good one. This is a good one. Hawley, Cruz.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think Cruz would want us to do this, so.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, absolutely.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think we're good.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got shot in the face.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where are they?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got shot in the face with some kind of plastic bullet.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Any chance I can get you guys to leave the Senate wing?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will. I've been making sure they ain't disrespecting the place.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Okay, I just want to let you guys know this is like the sacredest place.

[08:20:01]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know, right. No, and I am going to take some -- someone take a -- in this chair -- because Mike Pence is a fucking traitor. I am not one that usually take pictures of myself. But in this case, I think I'm going to give exception. Hey, can you in the red hat -- can you take a picture of me? Thank you very much.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, they ain't got a choice. There's half a million people here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You want to stay on? You should be stopping us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, no. He is doing the right thing. He is obeying his up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm making sure you guys don't do anything else. Now, that you've done that, can I get you guys to walk out of this room, please?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, come on, man.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I feel like you're pushing the line.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on, man. Come on, man.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is our Capitol. Let's be respectful to him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's four million people coming in, so there's a lot of control. We love you guys. We love the cops.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's only a matter of time. Justice is coming.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, come on, guys.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Over four million people are coming. Everywhere. All the way back as the monument.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All the way.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jesus Christ, we just broke your game. Amen.

CROWD: Amen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's say a prayer. Let's all say a prayer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Heavenly Father for gracing us this opportunity. Thank you, Heavenly Father.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Amen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For this opportunity to stand up for our God-given, unalienable rights. Thank you, Heavenly Father for putting the inspiration needed to these police officers to allow us into the building, to allow us to enter --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, Lord.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To allow us to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists and the globalists that this is our nation and not theirs, but we will not allow America, the American way of the United States of America to go down.

Thank you, Divine, Omniscient, Omnipotent and our all-encompassing Creator, God for filling this chamber with your white light and love, with your white light of Army, thank you for filling this chamber with patriots that love you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, Lord.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that love Christ.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We support you guys, okay? We support you guys. We support you guys and we understand what you're doing. We know you're doing your job. (END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Joining us now, CNN senior law enforcement analyst, Andrew McCabe. He is the former Deputy Director of the F.B.I., Trump derangement syndrome right there in full Technicolor on display for everyone to see.

It's just jaw dropping to listen to these Trump supporters and what they thought they were doing. And the guy who took that video, and he is a war correspondent normally, because this is the kind of behavior and foaming at the mouth extremism that you see in war zones, rather than the U.S. Capitol. What do you see here?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, that's exactly right. I mean, Alisyn, I look at this video, and it takes me back to watching the internal security camera video from the raid on our compound in Benghazi, Libya. It's the same thing.

It's a crowd that is just drunk on propaganda. They are high on the idea that they are executing some sort of righteous, you know, settling the scores and addressing some deep grievance.

They've clearly been radicalized, and it explodes in an orgy of violence and mayhem, and just insanity. It's really -- it has all of the hallmarks of a riot of extremists who have been pushed to that point because they've been radicalized by a charismatic leader; in this case, that happens to be the President of the United States.

BERMAN: I hope people are listening to what you are saying and understand, Andy that you spent decades fighting terrorism. So when you talk about someone being radicalized, you are talking about it as someone who fought al Qaeda for decades, who fought people who were radicalized by Osama bin Laden, and you are drawing a direct line to the type of behavior and the type of psychological response that people give.

And one of the first things we heard in that video from the invaders when they took over the Capitol was, we're listening to Trump, they told us.

MCCABE: That's right. I mean, it's absolutely explicitly clear, which by the way, is not going to be helpful to the President as he tries to defend himself in an upcoming impeachment trial.

It's pretty solid evidence that people took in his message as a direct order and incitement and encouragement to go and wreak that kind of havoc on our Capitol. But this has all of the hallmarks of the development, the radicalization of a group and the execution of violence by a group of extremists. That's what happened here.

We saw it with al Qaeda. We saw it with the Islamic State. You know, how was it the Islamic State was able to encourage normal everyday Americans, our fellow citizens to leave their lives, travel to Syria, live in horrific austere conditions and put their lives on the line?

[08:25:09] MCCABE: Because they had been radicalized by a charismatic leader, in

that case, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi and they were prepared to throw everything away in the support of that cause. That's essentially a version of what you're seeing here on the Capitol.

It's remarkable. And I should say, John, it doesn't end here. You know, many of these people who have been caught under the spell, you can see in the video, they you can see the ecstasy, you know, that how satisfied how -- they feel like this is a victory.

They are going to take that sense of victory, and you know -- and satisfaction back with them to their communities. They are going to share that with their likeminded associates on social media, or in person-to-person groups. At this moment, 1/06 is going to continue to be a moment of inspiration and a continuing radicalizing element for that population of right-wing extremists here in this country, mark my words.

BERMAN: Andy, thank you. I mean, it's chilling to hear. We appreciate you helping us understand what we're seeing. I wish we didn't have to get this dose of reality right now, but thank you.

MCCABE: Yes, yes. Me as well. Thanks, John.

BERMAN: All right. President-elect Joe Biden. He will be sworn in less than 52 hours from now. We're getting new information about what the Inauguration will look like, the security in place for all this and what he might say. That's next.

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