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Interview with Donald Trump's Former Attorney Michael Cohen; Powerful Winter Storm Slams Central and Eastern U.S.; U.S. and U.K. Strike Iran-Backed Houthi Targets in Yemen; Concern Raised by Harmful "Swatting" Practice's Rise; Interview with National Security Council Spokesman and National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired January 12, 2024 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEWS CENTRAL CO-ANCHOR: Michael Cohen, we appreciate your time this morning. Thanks so much for coming in.

MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER ATTORNEY FOR DONALD TRUMP: Good to see you, John.

Coming up for --

BERMAN: Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN NEWS CENTRAL CO-ANCHOR: Apologies. Coming up for us. A new winter storm is on the way. Take a look, we're going to show you of the snowy state capital in Wisconsin right now. Millions coast to coast need to get ready for another weekend. Snow, rain and brutal cold, the forecast, next.

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[10:35:00]

BERMAN: Every state in the country in under some type of weather alert today. Blizzard warnings, the tornado warnings are in effect as a huge storm works its way across the country. Heavy, wet snow is hitting Chicago right now. That doesn't look fun at all. Major travel delays. O'Hare ordered a full ground stop early this morning because of the freezing conditions.

CNN -- CNN's Whitney Wild is in Chicago looking cold. Whitney, how are things feeling right now?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: You know, it's actually OK now. It's starting to warm up a little bit. At the moment, we're in a bit of a lull. It was snowing very heavily earlier, about an inch an hour in the Chicagoland area. It's lightning up now, but this does not mean it's over. This weather advisory goes until tomorrow afternoon, John. And the problem here is that this is turning into rain and it is going to get Arcticly cold over the next few days as this cold air seeps down from Canada into the Great Lakes region. Let me show you a normally highly visible skyline in Chicago, blanketed with a thick layer of fog as this warm air mixes with the precipitation in Chicago. The other factor here, John, why it is snowy but it is not horribly cold, is we have a plow run right by us. See how wet this is, John? It's so wet here because it has been unseasonably warm in the Chicago area.

We have not seen a high of below freezing since November 28th. That means the ground is warm, the lake is warm, and that's really lessening the snow impact here in Chicago. Suburbs are a very different story. As you go west on 88, the roads are atrocious, and they're expecting up to a foot or more of snow in the western and southwestern suburbs around Chicago. We're thinking about four to eight inches total through Saturday. Next week will be absolutely horrible, John, because our weather team is saying that with the wind chill in the Chicagoland area, it could get to 30 below, that is dangerously cold temperatures, John.

BERMAN: Yes. Charming. Whitney Wild, great producing having the snowplow drive by during your live shot and even better producing not to get splashed by it as it was driving by. Super impressive. Thank you so much, Whitney.

WILD: I aim to please, John.

BERMAN: Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN NEWS CENTRAL CO-ANCHOR: Coming up the U.S. and the U.K., both countries, carrying out multiple strikes against Iran-back Houthi rebels in Yemen. President Biden making that direct order. Now there are concerns, as you might imagine this morning, that this might lead to a wider conflict in the Middle East. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby will join us next to talk about the next steps, that's ahead.

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[10:40:00]

BOLDUAN: We have new details this morning about the bomb threat at the home of the judge who's presiding over Donald Trump's civil fraud trial in New York. Police now say that the threat was unfounded and that it was a swatting incident. Swatting is a dangerous practice that has been really seeing a huge spike in this trend.

CNN's Rene Marsh has more.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVE YOST, (R) OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL: He claimed that, I had shot my wife.

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ohio's Attorney General Dave Yost.

LT. GOV. BURT JONES, (R) GEORGIA: They had shot their spouse and that they had somebody else tied up.

MARSH (voice-over): And Georgia Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, both police say targets of a dangerous trend on the rise called swatting. It's a hoax where the caller makes a panicked false report to 9-1-1 about a violent crime in progress at their target's home, triggering a large police response with armed officers. Like the one Georgia State Senator Clint Dixon experienced when he says he was swatted on Christmas Day.

CLINT DIXON, GEORGIA STATE SENATOR: I went to the front door and open the door and answered the door and was met by six officers that were carrying ARs.

MARSH (voice-over): Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene says she was targeted the same day. The police report says the caller told an emergency dispatcher he shot his girlfriend and Greene's home was the scene of the crime.

CHARLES RAMSEY, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: The intent is to harass the individual who's a subject of the swatting call, but there are serious consequences potentially. Officers responding very quickly to the scene, thinking that there's some major crime in progress. It puts the person who is the subject of the swatting at risk.

MARSH (voice-over): In a divisive and toxic political environment, both Republican and Democratic political figures seem to be increasingly the targets. Many of them viewed by Trump supporters as political opponents. This Sunday, D.C. police responded to a 9-1-1 call for a shooting at the home of the federal judge in Donald Trump's election interference case. The police report says, once units arrived, they realized the judge was not injured and there was no one in her home.

Last month, Jack Smith, the Justice Department special counsel overseeing two federal cases against Donald Trump, was swatted, a law enforcement source tells CNN. So, was Maine secretary of state after she ruled Trump ineligible to appear on the state's ballot. And just hours before Thursday's closing arguments, a bomb threat at the home of the judge presiding over Trump's civil trial.

MERRICK GARLAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL: These threats of violence are unacceptable. They threaten the fabric of our democracy.

SH: In May, the FBI set up a database to track swatting cases for the first time.

[10:45:00]

Since then, the agency says it has received more than 500 reports, but finding the perpetrators who often masked their caller ID data can be difficult. And that's why political figures who have fallen victim to the prime are urging Congress to act.

DIXON: If there was, you know, a federal law on the books, giving that this person is calling from another state that, you know, you'd have that jurisdiction and hopefully be able to apprehend those folks more effectively.

MARSH (voice-over): As elections drawn near, states are doing what Congress has not. Last year, Ohio passed a law making swatting a felony, and Georgia has drafted similar legislation.

MARSH: Well, it's not just high-profile political figures falling victim to swatting. It runs the gamut from Jewish and other religious institutions, government buildings, schools, to election workers and members of the military. Now, law enforcement stresses that this is a dangerous hoax. They point to a 28-year-old Kansas man who was actually killed after someone called in a fake 9-1-1 emergency about a hostage situation at his home.

Rene Marsh. CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Our thanks to Rene for that. So, a new warning from the White House after the U.S. led airstrikes on targets in Yemen.

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[10:50:00]

SIDNER: This morning, Houthi militants are threatening to retaliate after the U.S. and the U.K. carried out strikes on multiple Houthi targets in Yemen overnight. The strikes in response to the recent surge of attacks by the Iran-backed militants on commercial ships in the crucial Red Sea. President Biden said he would not hesitate to take further measures.

Joining us now from the White House, retired Rear Admiral and National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. Thank you so much for talking to us at a time when there is just a lot of tension that is rising in the region. The strikes do come in the heels of Secretary of State Blinken's trip to the region, one of many that he has made over the past several months.

He was, of course, trying to cool tensions. Iran condemning the strikes. But this is such a volatile environment. Is the Biden administration prepared for potential retaliation? And what would that look like?

JOHN KIRBY, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL SPOKESMAN AND NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL COORDINATOR FOR STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS: Well, you said it best yourself, Sara, in the last line of the President's statement last night. He said he's not going to hesitate to take further action if that's required to protect our ships, our sailors, our troops, our facilities, and of course international commerce.

Now look, we hope it doesn't come to that. The Houthis have a choice to make here today after these strikes last night, and that choice ought to be to stop these attacks. All the targets that we chose were targets that were meant to go after their exact capabilities to guide, to launch, and to store those kinds of missiles and drones. And again, they have a choice to make. We don't want to see an escalation. We don't want to see a broader conflict. In fact, everything President Biden has done since the beginning of this last couple of months, since the beginning of the attacks on October 7th, has been designed to try to take the tensions down and to prevent any other actor from escalating or widening or deepening this conflict.

SIDNER: When you look, though, at the region, with Israel taking out one of the Hezbollah commanders, and -- in an Israeli strike, a Hamas leader being killed, and looking at some of the conflagrations that are happening in the region, is there a real and present danger of this exploding into a regional war?

KIRBY: Well -- again, we're obviously, no, we don't want to see that happen. And again, as I said, everything the president has done diplomatically in terms of building a coalition to protect ships in the Red Sea, militarily in terms of adding to our force posture both in the Eastern Mediterranean and in Middle Eastern waters with a couple of carriers and, 4,000 sailors and Marines in the Eastern Med right now and destroyers in the Red Sea.

Everything we're doing in concert with our allies and partners, is designed, to keep this from widening and deepening into, a bigger conflict. It is the Houthis who have escalated over the course of attacks, almost 30 attacks since November. It is the Houthis that have decided that they were going to step up the intensity and the volume of those attacks. As recently as just Tuesday, a massive attack against U.S. vessels, commercial vessels and naval and naval warships in the Red Sea. And it is in that context that we took these strikes last night to get at their capabilities to do exactly that.

SIDNER: When you say it is the Houthis, do you mean that it is Iran, sort of, backing all of this? Is that how the administration is seeing it?

KIRBY: No question about it. The Houthis are pulling the trigger, but the Iranians are providing the guns. I mean, we know they're resourcing and supporting the capabilities of the Houthis, as well as Hamas, as well as Hezbollah, and these militia groups in Iraq and Syria. Let no -- no mistake about it. And we have and will continue to hold Iran accountable, with our allies and partners, appropriately for these destabilizing activities. That support to those groups needs to stop as well.

SIDNER: Now, we do have to ask this, because in February of 2021, Secretary Blinken actually revoked the terror designation of the Houthis. Saying in a statement that the decision was a recognition of the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen at the time. What do you make of this decision, and does it need to be reconsidered?

KIRBY: A humanitarian situation which is not completely alleviated, obviously. So, what I would tell you is that we're reviewing that designation right now. We haven't made up a decision about whether we're going to revoke it or not, or change it again or not. But I can tell you we're looking at that real hard. Again, the Houthis have a decision to make, and they need to make the right one now, certainly in the wake of these strikes last night. And that should be to stop these escalations, stop these provocative attacks, these reckless attacks, and do better for the people of Yemen who should expect better.

[10:55:00]

Better lives, more food, more water, more medicine, and frankly, peace.

SIDNER: The Houthis are promising retaliation against the United States and the U.K. We will leave it there. We will be coming back to you as soon as we hear any new news. But thank you so much for coming on and letting us know that you are considering, you said, the administration considering re-evaluating whether or not the Houthis belong on a designated terror list. I appreciate your time, Mr. Kirby. Thank you.

KIRBY: You bet you. Thanks.

SIDNER: John?

BERMAN: All right. The Iowa caucuses forecast to be some of the coldest on record, as in ever. Look at some of these temperatures, minus 14, minus 17. How the heck do you campaign in weather like that?

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[11:00:00]