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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Interview With Joe Scarborough; Biden Introduces Economic Team; Attorney General Bill Barr Finds No Evidence of Widespread Voter Fraud. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired December 01, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:00]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: In this case, Attorney General Bill Barr affirming this afternoon that the Justice Department has not found any evidence to support the, frankly, insane conspiracy theory that a computer program with ties to long dead Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez was used in some manner to change the election results, that there was no widespread fraud on a scale that would change the results of the November election, Barr asserted, which just underscores that President Trump lost fair and square because 80 million Americans voted to remove him from office.

And president-elect Joe Biden will be the president of the United States come January 20.

The attorney general said today that both the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security looked into allegations of fraud and found no such evidence -- quote -- "There's been one assertion that would be systemic fraud, and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. So far, we haven't seen anything to substantiate that" -- unquote.

Following in the footsteps of many Republican appointed judges and election officials and governors who have stood up for facts and refuse to indulge this nonsense for Mr. Trump and the president's efforts to disenfranchise millions of legal American voters, though this will likely sting a little bit more, given the fact that Barr has generally been a Trump loyalist on other matters, such as the Mueller investigation.

The blowback against Attorney General Barr is already coming, with Trump campaign attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, who have been quite aggressively pushing these deranged conspiracy theories. They issued a statement rebuking the attorney general.

The president's political career, in many ways, began with his embrace of a deranged conspiracy theory, that racist birther garbage about President Obama. His presidency is now ending basically the same way, in yet another desperate embrace of unhinged lies, one so wild that even his most loyal Republicans in his administration are refusing to stand by them.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins joins us now live from the White House. And, Kaitlan, Giuliani and Ellis released their own statement. What do they have to say?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

Jake, that statement came just moments after the Associated Press published these remarks by Bill Barr. It's on Trump campaign letterhead from Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis.

And they're saying, with all due respect to the attorney general, they believe there's been -- quote -- "no semblance" of a Justice Department investigation, and they go on to criticize the attorney general, saying they don't believe that he has looked hard enough into these allegations that, of course, they have been putting in the public sphere, but not putting into a courtroom, even though Barr did say not only the Justice Department looked into it.

He also said the Department of Homeland Security looked into it as well. But they ended their statement by saying that it was an opinion without knowledge of investigation by Bill Barr, as he becomes the latest official to rebuke the president.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS (voice-over): Attorney General Bill Barr the latest official to pierce President Donald Trump's claims of a rigged election, telling the Associated Press today the Justice Department has not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.

The president claimed in a telephone interview Sunday the DOJ wasn't doing its job to investigate his claims of widespread fraud.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Missing in action. Can't tell you where they are. I ask, are they looking at it? Everyone says, yes, they're looking at it.

COLLINS: But Barr says his department and the Department of Homeland Security looked into claims from the president and his attorneys that voting machines were rigged, but -- quote -- "We haven't seen anything to substantiate that."

While Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the election have failed, he's spending his last days in the White House behind closed doors, while, apparently, intent on taking down several members of the GOP with him.

Angry that a recount in Georgia didn't change the outcome, Trump lashed out at the state's Republican governor today, saying: "Brian Kemp allowed his state to be scammed."

Trump will be in Georgia this weekend ahead of the Senate run-off, but GOP officials may not be there to greet him.

LT. GOV. GEOFF DUNCAN (R-GA): I have got a full day on Saturday. I'm not even sure of the president's travel descriptions, but I wish him the best of luck down here.

QUESTION: Do you know if the governor will be there?

DUNCAN: I'm not certain of the governor's travel schedule.

COLLINS: Then there's Arizona's Republican governor, Doug Ducey, who is also in Trump's crosshairs after he acknowledged the results of the election and announced he will swear in his state's new Democratic senator, Mark Kelly.

Trump asked why Ducey was rushing to put a Democrat in office, to which Ducey responded with nine different tweets explaining Arizona election law.

Meanwhile, Joe diGenova, a member of Trump's legal team, is now insisting he was being sarcastic when he called for violence against Chris Krebs, the election security official Trump fired.

JOE DIGENOVA, ATTORNEY FOR DONALD TRUMP: That guy is a class-A moron. He should be drawn and quartered, taken out at dawn and shot.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Now, Jake, it wasn't long after the Associated Press had published those remarkable comments by Bill Barr that he showed up at the White House today, which is notable not because, of course, he's the attorney general and he typically is there, but he has not been there lately.

[16:05:03]

And he's been keeping this low profile. But we saw him going into the West Wing earlier today just moments after this. We asked the White House why he was there, because there was no meeting between President Trump and Bill Barr on his public schedule.

But we are told he had a meeting with the chief of staff, Mark Meadows, that was planned in advance of those comments about no widespread fraud in the election -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Kaitlan Collins at the White House, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Attorney General William Barr today has also appointed U.S. attorney John Durham to act as a special counsel. Durham will be investigating whether intelligence and law enforcement officials violated any laws as they investigated the Russia investigation in 2016.

CNN's Evan Perez joins us live.

Evan, what are you learning?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, John Durham is now a special counsel, essentially the same thing that Robert Mueller was during President Trump's presidency. And so what this means is that, come January, and Joe Biden takes

office, John Durham will continue doing his investigation. As you said, he is a U.S. attorney. So, traditionally, what happens is, all U.S. attorneys leave their positions and Joe Biden is able to pick a U.S. attorney in Connecticut, which is where John Durham is based.

What this means is that the Durham investigation, which began earlier this year, is going to continue probably for another year, well into the Biden presidency, looking into whether or not there were any laws broken in the beginning of the early parts of this -- of the Trump- Russia investigation back in 2016, Jake.

TAPPER: Can president-elect Biden fire a special counsel when he becomes president?

PEREZ: He can.

But, of course, this is why this is a bit of a political grenade that Bill Barr has left behind for the incoming president. We don't expect that -- unlike Donald Trump, who regularly threatened to fire Robert Mueller, we don't expect that Biden is going to do the same thing, obviously, having run on this whole idea of restoring normalcy to not only the Justice Department, but to Washington as a whole.

So we expect that Durham will be able to continue his work.

Jake, I should mention that Barr appointed Durham in October, and only now are we learning about this, in part because the Justice Department said they didn't want to affect the outcome of the November election.

TAPPER: All right, Evan Perez, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Let's discuss all this with our panel.

Let's start with Barr telling the Associated Press that there's no evidence that he has been able to find or anybody at DOJ of widespread fraud that would overturn the election.

Laura Coates, that's a pretty stunning debunking from somebody who has been a Trump loyalist, I think it's fair to say.

LAURA COATES, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: I think that's more than fair to say. And it is pretty stunning that, one, it took him this long to have the obvious, that the sky is blue, be actually conveyed the American people, but also that he chose to wholeheartedly say that he has not found not only the idea of fraud, but widespread fraud was not present to even overturn the election results.

This is a really strong rebuke from somebody who's a political appointee, who you remember is somebody who just last year went ahead of the Mueller report, and, actually -- maybe even more than a year ago at this point -- went ahead with the Mueller report and tried to create a narrative in anticipation of trying to undermine the presidency.

And his hope was that people would regard him with a great deal of credibility. And now that credibility seems to be harming the president's own narrative crafted now.

TAPPER: And, Laura Barron-Lopez, the president's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who we should note has been saying all sorts of crazy things with no evidence, wild allegations, not introducing any of them in a court of law because it would be perjury, or it would violate the court in some way, he released a statement today, saying -- quote -- "With all due respect to the attorney general, there hasn't been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation. We have gathered ample evidence of illegal voting in at least six states which they have not examined."

And, Laura Barron-Lopez, there is no evidence of widespread fraud. I mean, this is just -- again, you're allowed to lie in a press release.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.

Every time that Giuliani and other members of the president's campaign team that are still going around the country with Giuliani, are still repeating the fraud claims that have no evidence, they aren't providing any specificity.

They're just making wild accusations. And that's why so many of their lawsuits have failed and judges have thrown them out and said that the -- there's no merit to this, there's no evidence there. There's no there there.

And so Giuliani is continuing to stay by Trump's side. And it may very well be because of the fact that now there's talk that he could be looking to get preemptively pardoned by the president.

TAPPER: And, Ron, do you think Attorney General Barr is now going to get that the same kind of reception from Trump supporters that we have seen other Republican officials, like Chris Krebs, or the governor of Arizona, or the governor of Georgia, that they're now getting?

[16:10:13]

These are people who are just simply standing up for the rule of law and for facts. And now, in many cases, they're getting death threats.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. Yes.

The short answer, I think is yes. I mean, despite everything that Barr has done, as Laura mentioned, I mean, to try to tilt the deck toward Trump on the intervention in the Flynn case, in the Stone case, his characterization of the Mueller case, I think that's exactly what will happen.

And the fact that even Bill Barr with that record is able to come out and finally acknowledge the obvious I think makes it even more egregious that we are not hearing from almost any of the Republicans in Congress, particularly the Republican congressional leadership of Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy.

I mean, they are allowing this poison to kind of spread through the political system that has produced death threats against the secretaries of state in Arizona and Georgia and the kind of language you heard from Joe diGenova, and the polls showing 75 to 80 percent of Republicans think the election is stolen.

I mean, if even Bill Barr can say this, how does Mitch McConnell justify refusing to acknowledge the obvious, given the mounting evidence of the costs of his failure to do so?

TAPPER: Laura Coates, do you think that President Trump will fire Attorney General Barr?

COATES: Well, the idea -- I'm sure he will ridicule him. I'm sure he will summon him in some capacity to help to understand why he's not toeing the party line.

But, essentially, by that statement by Bill Barr, if you fire him or if you let the clock run out, he will no longer be the attorney general come January 21.

And so the idea here that he is trying to solidify, even in his absence, perhaps, either through firing or through the running out the clock, is probably why he's trying to install somebody who will continue the legacy of providing a cloud of innuendo about additional baseless claims, this time being what John Durham would be actually looking at to figure out whether there was a politicization of the Department of Justice or an investigation, with an eye towards trying to prevent Donald Trump's initial election back in 2016.

So, I think he is preparing not only for the ridicule, but also preparing for the ability to have somebody in place who can continue. And although there's no evidence to support that either, as the I.G. report indicated last year, that cloud of suspicion served President Trump well when Comey did it.

So, I think he's hoping to have it continue into the new days of the Biden/Harris administration.

TAPPER: And, Laura Barron-Lopez, just to touch base or to circle back with what Ron just referred to, one of the president's campaign attorneys, Joe diGenova, he publicly called for Chris Krebs, a well- respected now former top cybersecurity official, to be -- quote -- drawn and quartered, taken out at dawn and shot."

Now diGenova has since said that he was being sarcastic. It's not particularly funny or sarcastic, to me, when you listen to it.

Even White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah told me -- quote -- "That statement was wildly inappropriate."

I mean, I just don't even understand what world we're now in where people are now joking about killing people in an environment where officials and journalists and all sorts of people get death threats from the president's supporters all the time.

BARRON-LOPEZ: Yes, Jake, I mean, it's certainly a troubling -- a troubling statement. I mean, it's scary. And so one thing is that, again, there is a pattern with Trump and

those around him where there is a lack of strong condemnation when things like this occur or when the president himself in the past has even been willing to incite violence against his opponents or against protesters.

And so I don't expect a strong condemnation from the president against his attorney, but it certainly is warranted in this case.

TAPPER: All right, thanks to one and all. I appreciate your time.

In just two days, president-elect Joe Biden and vice president-elect Kamala Harris will have their first joint interview with me.

You can see a portion Thursday at 4:00 here on THE LEAD. Then you can watch the full interview Thursday evening in a CNN special event at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, only on CNN, their first joint interview.

Coming up: Joe Biden just announced his new economic team, his plan to get America working again, and the challenges he's already facing from the Republican opposition in Congress.

Plus, in just a few minutes, top health officials will vote on who should get the vaccine first, as airlines line up to deliver billions of doses.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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TAPPER: We're back with the 2020 lead today.

President-elect Joe Biden this afternoon introduced his economic team, and he promised to strike a new deal on economic relief and try to build up the middle class.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT: We can build a new American economy that works for all Americans, not just some, all. We need to act now, though, and we need to work together.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: That was a sentiment echoed by all of Biden's selections, underscoring the need for the recovery to be equitable.

Biden's pick for Treasury secretary, former Chairwoman of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen, called it an American tragedy that so many Americans are without jobs and going hungry. She said it's essential to move with urgency to jump-start the economy, as CNN's Jeff Zeleny now reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BIDEN: Our message to everybody struggling right now is this: Help is on the way.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With a pandemic deepening and economic pain intensifying, president-elect Joe Biden presented his economic team today as a new lifeline for struggling Americans.

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BIDEN: We can build a new American economy that works for all Americans, not just some, all.

ZELENY: Biden formally introduced Janet Yellen to be the first woman to serve as Treasury secretary.

BIDEN: No one is better prepared to deal with these crises.

ZELENY: A former chair of the Federal Reserve who also led the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton administration, Yellen pledged to help rescue families from a one-two punch of coronavirus and unemployment.

JANET YELLEN, TREASURY SECRETARY NOMINEE: Out of our collective pain as a nation, we will find collective purpose to control the pandemic and build our economy back better than before.

ZELENY: Yellen offered a stark policy contrast from the Trump era, saying addressing the nation's widening income inequality is an urgent priority.

YELLEN: It's a convergence of tragedies that is not only economically unsustainable, but one that betrays our commitment to giving every American an equal chance to get ahead.

Joining Yellen is Wally Adeyemo as the deputy Treasury secretary, along Neera Tanden at Office of Management and Budget, and Cecilia Rouse leading the Council of Economic Advisers. They face Senate confirmation, which means at least some Republicans must sign off on the nominees.

Tanden already drawing fierce opposition.

SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD): She's just been a -- most of her professional life a hard-edged partisan.

ZELENY: For now, at least, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will play a key role on who makes it into Biden's Cabinet. And, today, one month after the election, Biden said this when asked whether he has spoken to McConnell.

BIDEN: Not yet.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZELENY: So, president-elect Biden, again, not speaking to Mitch McConnell one month after Election Day. But, Jake, we did sense something here today in Wilmington we have not

seen in Washington really at all. That is a sense of urgency for some type of economic relief bill. Now, the president-elect said he urged Congress to do something in this lame-duck session, but he said it would just be a start.

This is clearly front and center in his plan for his first 100 days in office, which start in January -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Jeff Zeleny in Wilmington, Delaware, thanks so much.

The message Attorney General Bill Barr may be sending Republicans by reportedly saying there was no evidence of widespread election fraud -- that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:27:05]

TAPPER: And we have more on today's breaking news.

Attorney General Bill Barr admitting that there was no widespread fraud in the presidential election that would have changed the results.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough joins us now live. He's out with a new book about Harry Truman called "Saving Freedom: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization."

Joe, good to see you again. Congrats on the book.

Let me just ask you about Barr, though, because that's the breaking news this afternoon. He's been a Trump loyalist since he was brought in. What do you make of his comments today?

JOE SCARBOROUGH, AUTHOR, "SAVING FREEDOM": Well, everybody -- Jake, it's a thing that you know about Washington. There are people who've been around who understand that administrations come and administrations go.

And Bill Barr, just like Mitch McConnell, understand that -- and have understood this for several weeks -- that, come January 20, 2021, there's going to be a new president.

And so that's -- William Barr today certainly sent that message, and sent the same message, actually, that Republicans on the local level have been sending over the past couple of weeks, that, yes, they don't mind engaging in propaganda for the president from time to time, but they're not going to break the law for him, they're not going to undermine constitutional norms during this transition period, I think also just as significant as Mitch McConnell coming out and talking about the next administration, the new administration coming in, when he was talking about the stimulus relief packages.

So, I think it's just one more step forward for a Republican Party that actually should have acknowledged this weeks ago.

TAPPER: Although, on the other hand, president-elect Biden said today that he still hasn't spoken with Mitch McConnell.

SCARBOROUGH: Yes.

TAPPER: What is Biden facing, do you think, if Republicans still hold the Senate next year, especially when so many Republican senators are still refraining from calling him the president-elect and just acknowledging the reality that is obvious to anybody paying attention?

SCARBOROUGH: Well, you know, Joe Biden is facing exactly what the American people wanted him to face. They wanted divided government.

You look at those House races, Republicans did extraordinarily well, winning 24 of the 24 toss-up races, and not losing a single incumbent. In the Senate, they fared much better than the polls said they were going to fare, Susan Collins winning by nine points in a state that Joe Biden won by nine points.

And so it's obvious that Americans want divided government. If you look at the eight, nine senators right now from both parties that are trying to work together to push through a coronavirus package, I am always too optimistic when it comes to all things Washington, but I really think we have the possibility of some Republicans and Democrats working together.

And I see an expanding middle. And that's something that Joe Biden, more than any other president, my gosh, since, what, LBJ understands how the Senate works.

TAPPER: Yes.

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