Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Pence May be Called as Witness in Georgia Trial; Freed Hostages Angry with Netanyahu; DOJ Charges Russians with War Crimes. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired December 06, 2023 - 09:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:33:26]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning a CNN exclusive. Former Vice President Mike Pence could be a key witness when Donald Trump goes on trial in Georgia for trying to overturn the 2020 election there. Sources tell CNN that Fulton County prosecutors have a list of more than 150 potential witnesses who could be called to testify, including Mike Pence.

CNN's Zachary Cohen is on this reporting this morning.

Zach, what have you learned?

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yes, John, this is really the first piece of concrete evidence that prosecutors in the Georgia election subversion case are seriously considering calling former Vice President Mike Pence to testify in a trial. And, you know, on one hand that makes complete sense, right?

We know from the indictment in this case that the pressure campaign on Mike Pence to throw out, to reject the Electoral College voting votes in Georgia is a key part of this broader conspiracy case that prosecutors have been building, but it's also interesting because Mike Pence has not testified under oath in the Georgia case at all, in any capacity. And that's different than what we know about his engagement in the federal election subversion case overseen by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Now it's interesting, too, because Pence was actually asked about his willingness to testify in the federal case back in August. Take a listen to what he said then.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: I have no plans to testify. But, look, we'll always - we'll always comply with the law. But, look, I want to tell you, I don't know what the path of this indictment will be.

There actually are profound issues around this, pertaining to the First Amendment, freedom of speech. (END VIDEO CLIP)

[09:35:03]

COHEN: So, First Amendment issues No plans to testify. But also acknowledges he plans to -- will always comply with the law. We'll see if that also applies to the Georgia case, if he is called to testify as a witness.

And, John, I have to remind you, too, if he does take the stand in the Georgia case, it will be on camera. So, there is a scenario where he and Donald Trump are in the room together as he testifies.

BERMAN: And that we would see it as it happens. That's a great point.

COHEN: Exactly.

BERMAN: Zach, terrific reporting. Thank you very much.

Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you, John.

We're joined now by CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams.

Thank you so much for coming in for us again, Elliot.

Pence officially listed as a witness. We know that he went before the federal grand jury in the Jack Smith investigation, which is the federal investigation. Why now do you think that prosecutors there in Georgia are saying, you know what, we're putting him on the witness list?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, we should talk about what a witness list is and isn't. Prosecutors are obligated by law, Sara, to notify the defense and the court of anybody that they might call as a witness at trial. Now, who might you call as a witness at trial? It's someone who could provide what's called legally relevant evidence. Evidence that proves or disproves a central point at trial. And when someone is on trial, they're a close colleague of theirs, a top lieutenant of theirs in a political case would certainly be a relevant witness. And so, you know, Mike Pence, even if prosecutors don't choose to call him, may have evidence that could be valuable to a prosecution over election subversion here.

So, again, it -- you know, who knows whether they actually end up putting him on the stand. It was important to notify the defense that they did and he might be a valuable witness.

SIDNER: OK. So, let's move on to that other case, the federal case that's out of D.C. court.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

SIDNER: Jack Smith's case on the election subversion trial that is expected to begin next year. He's looking at sort of some new information that's been put into the court. Trump's support for Capitol rioters, to help show that he intended to inspire violence on January 6th. And I want to read just a little bit of the evidence that they're putting forward.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

SIDNER: It says, "evidence of the defendant's post-conspiracy embrace of particularly violent and notorious rioters is admissible to establish the defendant's motive and intent on January 6th that he sent supporters to the Capitol to achieve the criminal objective of obstructing the congressional certification."

What's he getting at here?

WILLIAMS: Right. So, when you bring -- when prosecutors seek to bring in what's called character evidence, and that's what that would be, it's evidence of the defendant's traits, character, state of mind, whatever else, that can be used not to establish that he's just a bad guy or that he was more or less likely to commit the offense. What it can be used to establish is his motive or intent.

And, once again, this is almost similar to what happened in Georgia, prosecutors have to issue a notice to the court and the defendant when they intend to introduce such evidence. This could be incredibly valuable evidence for prosecutors if the judge allows it in in establishing what Donald Trump's state of mind might have been.

And one of the best examples, and they noted in that pleading, Sara, is that when Donald Trump says the words "stand back and stand by" to the Proud Boys, they then went and put it on their merchandise on their website. That could be evidence of at least knowledge of, you know, certainly not a link -- a direct link between Donald Trump and whipping up the Proud Boys, but they believed what he said and there was at least a meeting of the minds in some way from them, and that can be used possibly to establish some form of knowledge or intent on the part of Donald Trump.

SIDNER: A little bit of sort of cause and effect we saw playing out there.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

SIDNER: I do want to ask you, moving on to one more case, Rudy Giuliani.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

SIDNER: He's facing this defamation trial and he's just not showing up to court. I mean what's going on here? And how might that affect the case?

WILLIAMS: Yes. OK, a couple things. One, it is on Rudy Giuliani's lawyer as much if not more than on Rudy Giuliani when he fails to show up in court. You have to know where your client is, and that's a failure on the part of his lawyer. So, there's a few failures. Number one, it's disrespectful to the court and to the time of the prosecutors and defense attorneys when a party, who has been summoned to court, doesn't show up. So, you're wasting everybody's time.

Two, there's a big sort of practical problem for the court now because what could happen at trial is she could -- the judge could put on a proceeding and then Giuliani could say, wait a second, I never agreed to that. My lawyer was the only person in court on that day. So, you know, you've sort of - you've wasted the court's time, but also created a practical problem because you can't have scenarios in which lawyer and attorney and court and prosecutor are not all in agreement as to how a proceeding is going to play out.

[09:40:05]

So, it's really -- it's more frustrating than anything else. It's created more work for the court and prosecutors. And it's really, I think, in large part, on Rudy's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani's lawyer, than anything else.

SIDNER: Probably not great to upset the judge so much before you're in front of them on a case.

WILLIAMS: No. Yes.

SIDNER: Thank you so much, Elliot. I appreciate you coming in.

WILLIAMS: Thanks, Sara.

SIDNER: Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Coming up still for us, new audio just out of former Israeli hostages confronting Benjamin Netanyahu in a private meeting. Now freed hostages angry at the Israeli government.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:45:07]

BERMAN: This morning the U.S. border patrol released body camera video of an agent rescuing a migrant who was drowning in the Rio Grande River in Texas. The agent spotted the Guatemalan man, quote, "struggling to stay afloat" in the river. One agent jumped in and pulled the man to shore. They say he is OK and did not need additional treatment and that he is in border control custody currently.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Also this, in the past 24 hours the IDF now says it has hit more than 250 Hamas targets in Gaza. Multiple sources are telling CNN also that U.S. officials expect this current phase of Israel's ground operation to last for several weeks before shifting possibly to a lower intensity fight possibly in January.

And already today CNN teams have seen plumes of smoke continuing to rise once again over Gaza.

CNN's Alex Marquardt is in Israel following all of this.

Alex, there is also another aspect of this to talk about. New audio that's been released of freed hostages confronting the Israeli prime minister. What is this about?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this is really remarkable, Kate. And it really speaks to the desperation and the anger that so many people in Israel feel when it comes to the hostages who are still being held in Gaza and the efforts, or lack thereof, they say, by the government to free them.

So, this tape that was obtained by Israeli news outlet Wynet (ph) is the audio recording of a meeting between hostages themselves and their families with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They accuse him of playing politics, of prioritizing politics over freeing the hostages. They say that the intelligence services in Israel didn't have a good sense of where the hostages were being held and they say that Israel's military campaign even endangered and wounded some of the hostages.

I want to play a clip of one of the women in this meeting. She herself was a hostage with her children. They were freed, but her husband is still inside. She says that no one was doing anything for them, she says, and that Israeli shelling actually wounded them.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FREED HOSTAGE (through translator): You will return them all. They will not wait 50 days. They will not wait another year, because you claim that they are strong enough. You have no information. You have no information. The fact that we were shelled, the fact that no one knew anything about where we were.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUARDT: So, that former hostage demanding of Netanyahu that he get the rest of the hostages out now. At one point, Kate, according to this recording, people started shouting "shame" at Netanyahu.

Netanyahu defended the military action saying it was actually the military operations and the military pressure that led to the initial release of hostages. And he went on to say that more military pressure will actually help get the rest of the hostages out.

Kate, the fact remains that just under 140 hostages, 138 to be exact, remain in the Gaza Strip and there is a lot of anger directed at the Netanyahu government they believe for - that the Netanyahu government is not doing enough to get them home.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Yes. And you can hear it, that recording continues. There's even more to it. And you can very clearly hear that in the recording there.

Alex, thank you.

Sara.

SIDNER: You know, she's really been flying under the radar, but not anymore. After so much anonymity, finally an award for Taylor Swift.

Also, the loss of a television legend. Iconic American television producer and creator Norman Lear has died. He revolutionized TV, pushed boundaries and made people smile for generations. The life he lived and the shows we loved, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:52:41]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BERMAN: All right, we do have breaking news.

Word of an announcement any minute now from the Department of Justice and Homeland Security. This is enforcement over accused human rights violations of Russians against an American or Americans in Ukraine. And the details here are absolutely extraordinary.

CNN's senior justice correspondent Evan Perez here with the details.

Evan.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John, this is an extraordinary case that's just been unsealed in the Northern District of Virginia. According to prosecutors, they're bringing charges against four member of the Russian military, a couple of commanders and two lower ranking officers in the Russian military. These people were serving either in the Russian military or in the Donetsk People's Republic, the so-called Donetsk People's Republic military. And they were operating in the eastern part of Ukraine. They are accused of detaining and torturing an American citizen, someone who lived in a village down there in the area of Kherson, the Kherson region of Ukraine, and over a period of days interrogating and torturing this person repeatedly. We don't know the name of the victim, but it is identified as someone who lived in that area in -- after the Russian invasion and was treated this way according to prosecutors.

Now, what makes this remarkable, obviously, is the fact that the Justice Department, and the Homeland Security Department, have been helping Ukrainians gather evidence of war crimes. They've been doing this work since the -- shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And they've spent months and months trying to gather this evidence from people who were - who have been held by the Russians.

Now, in this case, we're talking about Americans, right? These are people who the U.S. can bring charges against -- over, rather, their treatment. And so that's one of the reasons why this case is so unusual. The other thing is, we're told that this is the first time that this particular statute is being used. This is a statute that has to do with war crimes. Of course, you know, over the period of years, the U.S. has brought war crimes cases in other -- under other statutes, but this is the first one this is being used.

[09:55:10]

And, of course, this is now work that is continuing, John. The FBI, Homeland Security Department, HIS, are all still working with the Ukrainians where they can, where the U.S. has jurisdiction, they will try to bring these cases.

Of course, right now we only know the name of these four Russians. We don't know whether when and, you know, what means the U.S. might have to try to bring them in custody, John.

BERMAN: Yes, I was going to ask, Evan, charges to what end because it's not like these four Russians are in or about to be in U.S. custody. So, what's the significance there and also the timing here as Ukraine funding seems to be hanging in the balance?

PERE: Right. Exactly. Of course this is very crucial time for that funding, for the Ukraine war effort. And so the U.S., of course, the administration has been pushing to try to get Congress to supply more money for the Ukrainians and their - and the weapons that they need to be able to defend their territory.

But, look, John, this is an effort that began in 2022 certainly from the Justice Department and the Homeland Security Department. They sent agents over to the region to try to work with the Ukrainian prosecutors. We've seen Merrick Garland, the attorney general, go over to meet with the Ukrainians to try to emphasize the importance of this work that they -- you know, that they - that they're pushing to try to make sure they can bring some of these people to justice for some of the crimes that were committed after the invasion of Ukraine, John.

BERMAN: All right, Evan Perez, keep us posted. Again, this announcement expected any minute. We will check in on it when it happens.

Much more just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:00:00]