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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Leaked Trump Phone Call Stirs Outrage; Interview With Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA); Georgia Election Official Debunks Trump Election Conspiracies. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired January 04, 2021 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:12]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

And we begin today with breaking news. Moments ago, a top Georgia election official, one who is a longtime Republican, went down a list of President Trump's baseless, even unhinged election fraud claims, and debunked, refuted and rebutted every one of them, Gabriel Sterling visibly frustrated at the lies spread by President Trump and his allies.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GABRIEL STERLING, GEORGIA VOTING SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION MANAGER: And I will admit, when I listened to the audio of the phone call when the president brought that up again, and I heard it on a radio ad again today, I wanted to scream -- well, I did scream at the computer.

And I screamed in my car.

There is no shredding of ballots going on. That's not real. It's not happening.

No one is changing parts or pieces out of Dominion voting machines. That is -- that's not a real -- I don't even know what that means. It's not a real thing.

Secretary Raffensperger does not have a brother named Ron Raffensperger. That is also not real. The president tweeted that out as well. It's -- let's see. It's such a long list.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: It is a long list.

Sterling's outrage is in response to the outgoing president of the United States, who was recorded browbeating Sterling's boss, Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and his general counsel over the weekend, pushing them, threatening them, suggesting they might be charged criminally if they do not -- quote -- "find" enough votes for Trump to change the results of the election in Georgia. (BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: That's the thing, though.

That's a criminal offense, and you can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That's a big risk.

And you can't let it happen and you are letting it happen. I mean, I'm notifying you that you're letting it happen.

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 AUDIO CLIP)

TAPPER: "I just want to find 11,780 votes."

The recording, obtained first by "The Washington Post," offers a glimpse into the substantial effort by outgoing President Trump, who was defeated handily in the presidential election by president-elect Biden, to undermine and overturn the results of the election in ways that legal experts say certainly constitute an abuse of power and may in fact be illegal.

The recording comes as the president's supporters on Capitol Hill, a majority of House Republicans and at least a dozen Senate Republicans, are signing up for this potential act of sedition to undermine democracy in the United States.

Now, they will almost certainly fail. President-elect Biden will almost assuredly be inaugurated on January 20. But the move is causing tumult in the Republican Party, with many Republicans, including the Senate majority leader, standing against this effort.

Regardless of the fact that the effort seems doomed to fail, the U.S. is without question in a crisis. Too many members of the ruling Republican Party are clearly attempting to undermine the American experiment, undermine democracy

If House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy were speaker right now, it seems clear that President Trump's unconstitutional, desperate attempt to cling to power would pose a greater threat to the republic.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins now reports for us from Georgia.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The tape of President Trump's call with Georgia's Republican secretary of state was breathtaking for its shamelessness.

TRUMP: Fellows, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.

K. COLLINS: Their conversation lasting more than an hour, as the president urged Brad Raffensperger to overturn Georgia's results in his favor.

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

K. COLLINS: Despite Trump's efforts, Secretary of State Raffensperger and his legal counsel pushed back, while debunking one false claim after another.

TRUMP: Do you know anything about that? Because that's illegal.

RYAN GERMANY, ATTORNEY: This is Ryan Germany.

No, Dominion has not moved any machinery out of Fulton County

(CROSSTALK)

GERMANY: We're having an election on Tuesday.

TRUMP: No, but have they moved -- have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?

GERMANY: No.

TRUMP: You sure, Ryan?

GERMANY: I'm sure. I'm sure, Mr. President.

K. COLLINS: One year after he was impeached for pressuring a foreign leader to do his bidding, the recorded conversation is again raising question about whether Trump abused the power of his office.

[16:05:04]

TRUMP: I know this phone call is going nowhere

K. COLLINS: At one point in the call, the president implies the election officials could be prosecuted.

TRUMP: It's more illegal for you than it is for them, because you know what they did and you're not reporting it. That's a -- that's a criminal -- that's a criminal offense.

K. COLLINS: After the White House had attempted to contact Raffensperger at least 18 times, the secretary of state's office recorded the conversation out of concern Trump would misrepresent it.

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER (R), GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE: I just preferred not to talk to someone when we're in litigation. We let the lawyers handle it. The data that he has is just plain wrong.

K. COLLINS: Meanwhile, several Republicans are dodging questions about the tape, while other Trump allies are distancing themselves from it.

SEN. MARSHA BLACKBURN (R-TN): This call was not a helpful call.

K. COLLINS: The tape is also complicating the high-stakes Senate race happening in Georgia tomorrow, which will determine if Republicans or Democrats control the Senate. Trump heads there tonight for a rally. And the president's party is worried comments like this could suppress turnout.

TRUMP: Because of what you've done to the president, a lot of people aren't going out to vote, and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative, because they hate what you did to the president. OK? They hate it.

K. COLLINS: Trump's latest behavior appears to have alarmed the military so much that every living former defense secretary, including two of his own, and Dick Cheney, issued a statement saying: "The time for questioning the results has passed and the time for formal counting of the Electoral College votes has arrived."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

K. COLLINS: Now, Jake, during that press conference a few moments ago, Gabriel Sterling basically ran through all of the claims the president made on the call with the Georgia secretary of state, debunking them.

And he said -- quote -- "This is all easily, provably false, yet the president persists," and he said, "and by doing so undermines Georgians' faith in the election system, especially Republicans in this case,' which of course, he noted is important, given the reason the president is coming here today, why the vice president was also here today, Joe Biden as well.

Of course, that is that Senate run-off happening just 24 hours from now.

TAPPER: All right, Kaitlan Collins, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Let's bring in our panel Abby Phillip and Ron Brownstein.

And, Abby, let me start with you.

The context of this letter being written by 10 -- every living secretary of defense can be seen perhaps in this column from David Ignatius. He reported that senior officials are worried that potential domestic and foreign turmoil could give President Trump an excuse to cling to power using the military -- quote -- "Government officials fear that, if violence spreads, Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act or mobilize the military. Then Trump might use military capabilities to rerun the November three election in swing states, as suggested by Michael Flynn."

It sounds insane, but this is something that people are very concerned about. Do you think this is part, Abby, of why Mattis, Esper, Cheney, et cetera, wrote this letter?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I think we absolutely cannot rule it out.

And just the fact that all of these former officials decided to do this is not by chance. They would not do this if they didn't think it was necessary to say out loud that the military doesn't have a role in this process.

And on top of that, President Trump has been a big fan of the Insurrection Act in the past. He's been urged by former officials repeatedly over the last several years to use the Insurrection Act for all kinds of, frankly, ridiculous reasons to try to exert federal control over the military for non-military activities.

And so it is not outside of the realm of possibilities that he would be considering that, not only that, but there is the Michael Flynn aspect of this. He had Michael Flynn in the Oval Office to talk about this idea of rerunning the election.

None of this is outside of the realm of possibilities, partly because we're living in a world in which the president is doing exactly what he said he would do before the election, which is not accepting his loss and not being willing to concede.

And so we have to take everything seriously.

TAPPER: Ron, another part of the context here is that the Pentagon right now, a number of senior posts are not confirmed by the Senate. They're a bunch of Trump loyalists.

And we have to note that, according to former Secretary of Defense Perry, it was Dick Cheney that organized this letter.

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

Look, I agree with Abby. There is no -- this did not happen by accident. There is no way they would have gone to this trouble, including so many former Republican secretaries of defense, if they did not feel there was a genuine threat that they needed to squelch before it gained any momentum.

And even short of the military, what we're watching from Congress is equally outrageous. And if you listened to Mr. Sterling's presentation today about how absurd these claims were in Georgia, the claims that Republicans are making about Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are no more coherent.

[16:10:03]

And yet, even after this elaborate deconstruction, we're in a situation where as many as 140 or 150 House Republicans and a quarter of -- roughly a quarter of the Republican senators are going to vote not to accept the results of the election?

This is truly a crisis. I mean, this is a crisis moment, where our assumptions about American democracy are being challenged. I said many times we do not have a language in the American political tradition to describe what is happening inside the Republican Party.

It is more akin to what we have seen in countries like Turkey or Hungary, this idea of democratic backsliding. You win an election, and then you use state power to entrench your entrench your control. That's what we're witnessing. And who knows where it goes in the years ahead.

TAPPER: A number of House and Senate members, Republicans, rewriting the headlines of their hopefully far-in-the-future obituaries. It will now say, so and so voted for sedition in 2021.

Abby, a quote that has gotten a lot of run in the last few days, remember when Republican Senator Susan Collins voted to acquit President Trump at his impeachment trial. He was pressuring Ukraine's president for dirt on the Bidens in not a dissimilar way from what we heard with Raffensperger.

This is what Senator Collins had to say shortly after President Trump was acquitted.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME): I believe that the president has just learned from this case.

QUESTION: What do you believe the president has learned?

S. COLLINS: The president has been impeached. That's a pretty big lesson.

There has been criticism by both Republican and Democratic senators of his call. I believe that he will be much more cautious in the future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Obviously, Abby, he wasn't.

But I think it's fair that Susan Collins got that half-right. I think he did learn a lesson. What do you think?

PHILLIP: I think the lesson that he learned was that he can do these things and basically get away with it.

I mean, this is exactly what I think Democrats had been warning about all along, which is that this is an emboldened president. He did not learn any lessons, not from the Mueller investigation, not from the impeachment proceedings, because then he proceeded to have another call that was basically the Ukraine call part two, in which he sort of tries to strong-arm an official to do something that is either unethical or just, frankly, illegal.

Look, President Trump has never understood the boundaries of legal or ethical behavior, especially in the context of an American democracy. And one of the things that the Ukraine call was all about was this idea that he could do anything, go to any lengths to get a political upside, and that is exactly what is happening right now.

And, in fact, Republicans on Capitol Hill are basically backing him up in the Senate and saying, that's OK. It's OK for you to do that. And we're going to have your back on it.

TAPPER: All right, Ron Brownstein Abby Phillip, thanks to both of you. A party divided, the GOP split on whether to join President Trump's

delusional plot to steal the election.

Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff will join me live next.

Then: what Operation Warp Speed is now looking at doing with the coronavirus vaccines to try and get more shots into arms faster.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:17:32]

TAPPER: In our politics lead today: a sharp divide widening in the Republican Party this week.

President Trump's most ardent supporters planning to try to overturn president-elect Joe Biden's victory during Wednesday's formal Electoral College campaign Congress. Many top Republicans, however, are warning their colleagues to skip the stunt.

House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney saying their effort is -- quote -- "directly at odds with the Constitution's clear text and our core beliefs as Republicans" -- unquote.

Joining me now, Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Chairman Schiff, thanks so much for joining us.

Probably not every day you agree with Liz Cheney. Have you talked much with your Republican colleagues in the House? What are you hearing from them?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Well, it's been very difficult, actually, with the pandemic to have many conversations the way we usually would on the House floor.

But, look, I think there are a great many Republicans like Liz Cheney who understand that what they're doing is anti-constitutional, anti- democratic, repugnant to their conservative beliefs.

But, nonetheless, you have well over 100 House Republicans, about a dozen Senate Republicans who, for reasons of fear or ambition, are ready to shred their oaths.

And it's a real low point for our democracy in a four years of low points. But it's not like we didn't see this coming. This is what the president has wrought for years now.

TAPPER: Well, I -- it's not that we didn't see this coming from the president, although I don't know that we saw it going to this lengths.

But I have -- I confess I am surprised to see Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise and the House Republican leadership other than Cheney signing up to this nonsense. They signed on to that crazy lawsuit from the Texas attorney general that the Supreme Court threw out the window. And now they're going forward with this effort.

If Kevin McCarthy were speaker right now, and thus able to actually block electoral votes from being counted in the House, I don't know the law. Would that keep Joe Biden from being president, if McCarthy were in the majority?

SCHIFF: Well, it could if Mitch McConnell or Senate Republicans had a majority there that was also willing to do the president's dirty work. Now, I don't know that that's the case in the Senate.

But you may have had a higher estimation of Kevin McCarthy than I did. Sadly, he's proven to be exactly who I think he is, which is driven by politics and power alone, with little regard for the Constitution or his obligations of office.

[16:20:10]

So, I have had for years, sadly, to acclimate to that kind of GOP leadership. But, look, even though it's going to fail, it is doing real damage to our democracy, because it's establishing a precedent.

And should the party majorities differ in the future, as you point out, it could lead to catastrophe. It could lead to a Congress deciding, the people have spoken, but we don't like what they have had to say, and we're simply going to overturn the election.

That's not what the Constitution says.

TAPPER: Just a short time ago, we watched Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling rattling off a long list of fact-checks of these wild, deranged conspiracy theories that he heard from President Trump on that tape when he tried to pressure the secretary of state of Georgia.

Sterling is a Republican. He's clearly exasperated. Do you think he changed any minds? Or is this just far beyond the convincing stage at this point when it comes to the millions of Republicans who are being told these lies and are believing them?

SCHIFF: I think it's enormously important that Republicans of principle speak out.

And you do see many of them doing that. And you see some in elected office, like Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney. It's enormously important. It can't be just the Democrats defending the Constitution. It requires all people of good principle to do the same.

Does it matter, when there there's a powerful conservative media echo chamber that's going to repeat the president's lies and falsehoods? It still matters. It may not sway the majority of GOP voters out there, but it does reach people. And it's our duty. So, I applaud them for what they're doing. We all are in this together.

TAPPER: Yes. SCHIFF: And this is a real stress test for our democracy.

TAPPER: Your colleague Republican Congressman Chip Roy of Texas did something interesting last night. He challenged the seating of the delegations of members of the House from Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Nevada.

He wanted his colleagues on record, saying, if the vote counts in those states for Joe Biden were wrong, then so were the counts for you.

Do you think any of the Republicans in the House got the point?

(LAUGHTER)

SCHIFF: They all get the point, Jake. It's not that they're living in some fantasyland, that they don't understand what they're doing, that they drank the Kool-Aid.

They know exactly what they're doing, which, really, in a way makes it worse, because they understand they are perpetuating a falsehood, and they're willing to do it. They know what their oaths require, and they cannot uphold it.

But they have no -- no misunderstanding about just how fallacious these claims of fraud are. They're doing it because of naked ambition. Some want to run for president in the Senate. Others don't want to antagonize the president's base, and it's motivated by fear.

But you would hope that devotion to country would be greater than either one of those other attributes, but apparently not.

TAPPER: House Democrats have begun drafting a resolution seeking to censure President Trump because of this phone call with the Georgia secretary of state. Is that going to happen?

And was what the president did there illegal, in your view?

SCHIFF: It's very possibly illegal.

And Georgia may investigate. The subsequent -- the Justice Department in the new administration may have to look into it as well. I think that phone call, like that corrupt phone call the president had with the president of Ukraine, needs to be viewed in the surrounding circumstances.

This call didn't happen in isolation. It's part of a pattern with the president of trying to overturn the election. So, it's very possibly a violation of criminal and other laws.

In terms of what the House can do, right now, Jake, we are focused on Wednesday, and that is making sure that we get past that critical date in the history of our democracy. And then I think we will turn to figuring out, OK, what step, if any, should the House take in these waning days of this administration?

TAPPER: Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff of California, thank you so much. Appreciate you being here.

SCHIFF: Thank you.

TAPPER: What Trump ally and former U.S. attorney Chris Christie thinks of the mob tactics in the Trump phone call.

He will join me next. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:29:09]

TAPPER: In our politics lead today: Republicans are growing increasingly worried that President Trump's rally in Georgia tonight might be all about him and his unfounded belief that the election was stolen, instead of about the two Senate candidates, the Republicans he's supposed to be campaigning for, sources tell CNN.

The president's trip comes just one day after CNN obtained audio of President Trump demanding that Georgia's Republican secretary of state -- quote -- "find" thousands of votes to overturn the election results in Georgia in his favor.

Joining me now to discuss, among other topics, is former Republican governor of New Jersey Chris Christie.

Governor Christie, what's your reaction when you hear President Trump telling Secretary of State Raffensperger to -- quote -- "find" 11,780 votes, so that Georgia will flip to him? What do you think when you heard that?

FMR. GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-NJ): Well, it's obviously not the way our democracy works.

And I'm, quite frankly, proud of the Georgia secretary of state and his team that was on the phone that dealt with that entire call, as it seemed to me, unemotionally, directly, and under the law.