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Interview With Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO); Defense Secretary Nominee Pete Hegseth Under Fire; Matt Gaetz Withdraws as Attorney General Nominee. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired November 21, 2024 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:33]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: We're beginning this hour with some big breaking news on president-elect Donald Trump's pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz saying that he's now withdrawing from consideration.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Our correspondents are standing by with these new developments.

Let's begin with CNN chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid.

And, Paula, this news came as you were about to publish some reporting about Matt Gaetz. You reached out to him for comment. And just before you were about to move forward with the story you were going to air with, you got this response from Gaetz announcing that he was withdrawing.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: That's exactly right.

We firmed up our reporting earlier today. I reached out to his team around 11:30 this morning. We made it clear that we would go with this new story at 12:30. And we offered him the opportunity to weigh in. And instead of getting a response or a comment, just about a minute before we were about to go live on CNN, he notified the world that he is withdrawing from consideration as attorney general.

And this new story is that the Ethics Committee was told of a second sexual encounter with a woman who was just 17 years old. Now, she told -- the woman who was just 17 at the time, she testified to the committee that this second sexual encounter, which has never been reported before, also included another adult woman.

And I want to note that she testified about both sexual encounters, not only to the House Ethics Committee, but also in a civil deposition down in Florida and that her testimony has been consistent. Now, the congressman, of course, was investigated by the Justice Department over these allegations. They did not charge him.

I will also note that the adult woman who was allegedly part of this encounter has also denied that she had sex with the minor. But this was an important piece of reporting, because not only is it a second alleged sexual encounter with someone that was underage. It's also something that we didn't know before.

I have covered the investigations into Congressman Gaetz for four years. We have broken so much news on the criminal investigation. We broke the news that he wasn't going to be charged. We have been following the House Ethics probe.

This was the first time that we had ever heard that the under -- alleged underage victim said she had sex with him twice and that the second encounter allegedly involved an adult woman, incredibly significant piece of reporting, because it reminds people that the Ethics Committee has learned things that the public is not aware of.

But when we reached out again, we did not get a statement. Instead, the world was informed that Gaetz will no longer be considered for attorney general.

KEILAR: All right. Paula, stay with us. Obviously, this is a quickly developing story.

We want to go to CNN's Kristen Holmes, who is in West Palm Beach, Florida, near Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, where his Cabinet has been taking shape.

Kristen, are you hearing anything from Trump or his inner circle about this decision?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, we have gotten a post from Donald Trump. This is what he wrote on TRUTH Social.

He wrote: "I greatly appreciate the recent efforts of Matt Gaetz in seeking approval to be attorney general. He was doing very well, but at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the administration, for which he has much respect. Matt has a wonderful future, and I look forward to watching all of the great things that he will do."

Now, the other thing I want to note here is I was told by a source that Donald Trump and the transition team were made aware that Matt Gaetz was going to withdraw his name from attorney general before he actually did so on Twitter, that they had prepared for this, that they had statements ready for this to move forward.

Now, I'm also told that there was a number of reasons for Matt Gaetz withdrawing. I was told by one source that they believed there was more information that was going to come out in that Ethics report that was going to make everything harder, that while yesterday they were cautiously optimistic after their meetings with senators, it became clear there were a number of hard no's and that at that time he couldn't have gotten confirmed.

Now, on top of that, with more information coming out of this Ethics report, they believed that that was not going to make their job any easier. So there were conversations going on about just how difficult it would be to get Matt Gaetz across the finish line. The other point here to make is that there have been side

conversations, and it's unclear if Donald Trump was part of these, about how much political capital Donald Trump should be using on Matt Gaetz because there are a number of other controversial Cabinet picks. And the question, of course, is whether or not those people were going to essentially fall by the wayside because all of his political capital was going to be focused on Matt Gaetz.

Whether or not Donald Trump was brought into those conversations, unknown, but it is clear here that Matt Gaetz decided to withdraw his name. As Donald Trump was saying, at least according to him, it was because it was becoming a distraction. We also heard those lines from Matt Gaetz as well.

[13:05:10]

SANCHEZ: Kristen Holmes live for us in West Palm Beach.

Let's take you out now live to Capitol Hill with CNN's Lauren Fox.

Lauren, as Kristen pointed out, Gaetz was just there yesterday meeting with Republican senators, urging them to give him a shot.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

And, obviously, his team was really arguing that they were feeling confident about that -- those meetings that they had yesterday. But one thing that has become very clear is there's a sense of relief up here on Capitol Hill among a lot of Senate Republicans who were either worried that they were going to have to take a very difficult vote on Matt Gaetz, potentially crossing the new and incoming president.

There were also some Republicans who are close to the president's team who still had serious concern about Matt Gaetz. I want to read one statement that Susan Collins just gave in the hallway to our colleague. She said -- quote -- "What I think it probably reflects is the meetings that he had yesterday with senators as they started going through the Judiciary Committee members. I don't know that for a fact, but I think that he has put his country first and I am pleased with the decision."

Now, another Republican I spoke with on my way to this hit, Roger Wicker, said that this was a positive development. And when I pushed him on why he thought that this was such a positive development, he just smiled at me, did not answer the question, basically, I think trying to insinuate, we all know why this was going to be a very tough road ahead in the months that came after this nomination.

Now, another thing to keep in mind here is there's still a fight to get that Ethics report out in the light of day. We are told that Representative Sean Casten, who had introduced a privileged resolution to force a vote of the full House on this issue, still wants to move forward when they get back from the Thanksgiving recess.

So there's still some pressure points up here on Capitol Hill about getting the contents of that Ethics report out into the public eye. Of course, you would need some Democrats to vote with Republicans. It's not clear that that would happen, especially now that Matt Gaetz is no longer vying to be the next attorney general of the United States.

KEILAR: All right, Lauren Fox live for us on the Hill, thank you so much.

We have CNN senior law enforcement analyst Andrew McCabe joining us now.

Andy, your reaction to this news, and also, I mean, as Paula said, after so much reporting that there was there are additional details that we, the public, were not privy to about another encounter here?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Sure.

So in terms of reaction, Brianna, I mean, my reaction is that the men and women of the Department of Justice and all of its component agencies, this is a very positive result for them, because I know for a fact from folks that I speak to who are in the department or even recently left the department there is great concern about the sort of leadership that may come in the next administration.

And the announcement of Matt Gaetz as the as the nominee for the attorney general job was pretty much uniformly met with horror. He is profoundly incapable and unqualified for that job. So they have avoided that one really concerning result.

But I don't think anyone is -- nobody's kidding themselves. There will be another nominee. And likely, whoever that is, they will also come to the department with the instructions and the mandate from the president and the administration to really tear things apart and take a very different view of the work that the department does.

So people who work there are very committed to the mission of that organization, who have invested their lives and their careers in doing that work are understandably still be concerned about that.

SANCHEZ: Andrew, you and I actually spoke over the last few days about the investigations into Matt Gaetz, not only by the House Ethics Committee, but also the Department of Justice, which declined to press charges against him.

I'm wondering if you're surprised at all that we learned more about the details into these investigations, if there is potentially more still that you imagine may come to light.

MCCABE: I'm confident that there's more information. There's always more information in the investigation, in the files of the investigators, in the transcripts of witnesses that have been interviewed.

There's always more than what ultimately meets the public's eye. So I'm not surprised here that there was more information that we have now learned about as this process kind of stumbled forward. We would likely have learned much more if it went all the way to a hearing, where witnesses would likely be brought in. Some of these very witnesses whose accounts we're talking about today may have been brought in to share their stories with the committee. It's important to know that the work of the Ethics Committee is very different than the work of the Department of Justice. Their job is not to find -- to prove the elements of a crime.

[13:10:10]

Their job is just to find out who has information to share about this alleged activity or this activity that Matt Gaetz has allegedly been involved with. So it's a very broad scope inquiry. They're typically very thorough and very careful about protecting that information. But as this process went forward, it's inevitable you're going to find out more and more things.

I think today's revelation about two encounters with a 17-year-old, two alleged encounters with a 17-year-old, is -- really changes the game and should kind of shake people in a way that wakes them up to the seriousness of what this person may have engaged in and the sort of effect that it has on whether or not he is qualified for a position of trust.

I would say, obviously, no. Doesn't mean that he's committed a crime. DOJ never took him -- never charged him, never took him to court, never proved that he had committed a crime. But the fact that the committee talked to witnesses who they believed were credible, you have to take those stories very seriously and factor that into your assessment of Mr. Gaetz.

KEILAR: It also doesn't mean that he didn't commit a crime. And I think we should be clear about that as the DOJ considered whether to charge or not, Andy.

Take us through that, because you're hearing these allegations -- and I think anyone looking at them says, I mean, shouldn't a 17-year-old be protected if this is actually what happened? And yet DOJ makes a decision not to proceed with this for reasons. And they do this in cases all the time.

And, of course, as you said, the legal line is different than the ethical line. But explain that decision to us, what could have complicated prosecuting this.

MCCABE: That's a great question, Brianna.

And it really gets to the heart of this thing and I think also raises some other important questions. DOJ likely had access to all these same witnesses. They likely received the same testimony. They probably had additional information they were able to get with legal process and subpoena and things like that.

At the end of the day, they determined they did not want to go forward with the prosecution. The standard in the department in making that decision is whether you think you could obtain a conviction at trial and sustain that conviction under appeal. So, clearly, whatever they had failed to meet that standard in their

discretion, and they had a great discretion deciding that. There's a lot of reasons why they might have thought they couldn't get a conviction at trial. It may be they didn't want to put these witnesses through the -- and the really rough process of having to go to trial and testify about events like this.

It may be they thought some of the witnesses wouldn't hold up to cross-examination in a way that would have been productive for the prosecution. There's a million different reasons. And I think at some point the Oversight Committees should talk to the department about that, should get a better understanding about why they walked away from a prosecution of a person in a very high-ranking position that allegedly involved the victimization of young women.

You know, I'm not clear that DOJ would ever share their reasons with their Over -- with the Oversight Committees, but it's something that they should certainly look into.

SANCHEZ: Andrew McCabe, thank you so much for the analysis.

Let's bring in CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings now. He was the special assistant to President George W. Bush.

Scott, you were here with us when Gaetz was announced as the nominee. And at the time, I think it's fair to say you were in shock and disbelief. What's the sentiment now that he's withdrawn?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think it was probably right to do so.

I mean, this had a low probability of success from the beginning and the information that's come out now made it even worse. So he did the right thing by president-elect Trump. That's for sure. I didn't think he ever had a path to 50. And it didn't seem that he was ever going to get there.

So Trump deserves to be able to nominate someone who has a fighting chance of being confirmed. That obviously wasn't happening with Gaetz. I mean, this transition, though, as I said at the time, it's entertaining. I mean, it has more twists and turns than an M. Night Shyamalan movie. And now we're going to get somebody else. And we will see who that is.

He had a list that he had before and maybe he will go back to that.

KEILAR: I'm very curious about that because there were some folks on that list that had a more conventional streak, I think, for heading up DOJ.

Wyoming Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis said this -- with Gaetz deciding not to have his name in contention anymore, that this will allow Trump to appoint someone equally tenacious. So let me ask you this. Was there like a singularity in the brand of tenaciousness that was Matt Gaetz?

[13:15:13]

It seemed that Donald Trump might have been looking for something like that. Is there someone else who brings that?

JENNINGS: Oh, I think there's several people who would be tenacious, who see the world the way President Trump sees it, but just don't carry the same amount of confirmation baggage that Gaetz obviously brought into this thing.

So, of course, I mean, there's a number of great choices, and I don't think there's any shortage of people who want to work for Donald Trump. I think he's got all kinds of folks who were highly qualified for all these jobs who would be more than happy to serve the American people in this. So I think he will have a good list to pick from.

I do think this. He went out on a limb on this one, and it got sawed off pretty quickly. My advice would be don't do it again, because if you nominate another person who starts below the line -- that was the thing with Gaetz. He sort of always started below the line of anywhere being near confirmable.

KEILAR: A little underwater.

JENNINGS: If you do that again, you're putting your party right back in the same position of having to fight to get above water.

KEILAR: Has he done that on some of the ones he has?

JENNINGS: I think the rest of them all could be confirmed. Gaetz, I think, as I said to you that day, he always struck me as being in a different category. I think everybody else is still within the realm of confirmable.

So this job, my advice would be, well, let's find somebody who starts above water, not below water.

SANCHEZ: I do want to point out we just got new reporting from Kaitlan Collins that, at this point, Trump does not have a backup attorney general in mind.

The reporting is that, according to two people familiar with the matter, he has to return to the drawing board. He struggled to find a candidate he liked initially, which is what led him to Gaetz in the first place.

Going back to picking Gaetz in the first place, there were concerns about Gaetz for years, as Paula had been reporting. These things were out there in the ether. The Trump team obviously knew that more was going to come out. Why go through all of this?

JENNINGS: Yes, did they? I don't know. I mean, that's a great question. I mean, this may have been a decision that was made more on the fly than after a considered vetting process.

So that's another thing about nominating people to jobs. It does pay to do your homework on the folks you send up. And, look, everybody has things that come out about them. I mean, every nominee gets picked at and picked over. It doesn't necessarily mean everything is fatal.

But in this case, the information that had come out and that's coming out today obviously was going to be a bridge too far for someone who already had pretty fraught relationships on the Hill.

KEILAR: Scott Jennings, thank you so much.

Still ahead: Trump's defense secretary pick going on offense. He is on Capitol Hill today trying to win over lawmakers, but this visit comes on the heels of a newly released police report detailing sexual assault allegations against the former FOX News host from an incident that allegedly took place back in 2017.

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[13:22:01]

SANCHEZ: Right now, critical discussions are under way on Capitol Hill that could seal the fate of president-elect Donald Trump's choice for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.

The former FOX News host is with vice president-elect J.D. Vance, trying to rally support from key Republican senators who will decide if he should lead the Pentagon. But Hegseth is facing tough new questions from a police report detailing graphic details from the sexual assault allegation against him.

The report lays out what Hegseth and the anonymous woman say happened in 2017. Their accounts vary. Hegseth has denied the account and was never charged with a crime, but the details could be damning.

CNN's Sara Murray is here with us now.

Sara, walk us through what's in this report.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it is disturbing, and these really layout competing narratives of what happened on this evening in October in 2017 in California around a Republican women's conference.

And I want to go first to the woman's account. Again, she's not named. She's referred to Jane Doe in this police report. And she describes Hegseth at this conference as giving off a creeper vibe. She says that she ended up in a strange hotel room. Hegseth took the phone from her hands. He blocked the door with his body, and she remembered saying no a lot.

There are also a lot of parts she forgot that she just couldn't piece together. She said it's possible somebody slipped something in her drink, but there are other eyewitnesses who said she seemed sober and also other people who said they might have seen her earlier in the evening having an encounter with Hegseth at the bar. One person perceived that as flirting.

Now, eventually, after this encounter in the hotel room, she decided to seek medical attention. She got her rape kit and the nurse reported it.

Now I want to go to Hegseth's version of events, which is very different from what this woman recalls. He says this was a consensual sexual intercourse between two adults. He said she was in his hotel room and there was always conversation, always consensual conduct. He said he and Jane Doe had a conversation about how she was married and she was going to tell her husband that she had fallen asleep on a couch in someone else's room, and that she showed early signs of regret.

So, again, he's denied that there was any kind of sexual misconduct. His attorney, Timothy Parlatore, has said the same. He said to CNN: "The police report confirms what I have said all along. The incident was fully investigated and police found the allegations to be false, which is why no charges were filed."

We should note what this police report tells us and doesn't tell us. There were no charges filed. That is correct. It doesn't say that her allegations were false, and there are pieces of evidence that we still don't have and the public may never have. There's surveillance video. There's a memo from the district attorney's office that could shed light on why there weren't charges in this case.

And the woman again, Jane Doe, she's not commenting. CNN found her last week and tried to ask her about this incident. She broke down in tears when our team asked her about it.

SANCHEZ: And you can imagine she will potentially hear from Republican senators soon seeking similar answers.

Sara Murray, thank you so much for the reporting -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado.

[13:25:01]

Sir, we will get to Pete Hegseth here in a moment. First, though, I do want to ask you about this breaking news on Matt Gaetz, your former colleague withdrawing his nomination for attorney general.

He seemed singularly poised to offer president-elect Trump a type of retribution through his DOJ that others might not be able to. What does his withdrawal from consideration?

REP. JASON CROW (D-CO): Well, it means a couple of things.

Number one, Matt Gaetz was never qualified to hold this position, but that was actually kind of the point. He was nominated not to actually execute the duties of attorney general, as America would expect that person to do, but rather to be a loyalist and to exact retribution on Donald Trump's perceived enemies, right?

You look at the vast majority of his nominations, not all of them, but the vast majority of them, and they fall into several different categories. They're either people that are his donors and supporters, so they're being paid back and they're going to earn money or get something, some kind of benefit out of the nomination.

They are people who are being nominated to dismantle or destroy an agency that performs a critical government function for Americans. Or they are people that are just extreme loyalists that are put in position to be his foot soldiers and to exact retribution.

That is -- about 90 percent of his nominees fall into one of those three buckets right now.

KEILAR: And let's talk about Pete Hegseth now. This police report that's out, I'm assuming you have had a chance to take a look at some of the details here in the last few hours. What's your reaction to it?

CROW: Well, my reaction is less important than Donald Trump's reaction.

Donald Trump has responded to this, saying that he's undeterred, that he doesn't care about these allegations. And that actually makes sense, knowing Donald Trump, because he's an adjudicated sexual abuser himself. So, of course he's not going to be concerned about allegations about one of his nominees doing the same.

But, listen, Pete Hegseth, even before these allegations, is not qualified to hold this position. He's not qualified because he doesn't have the experience, either the experience running a large organization or the experience on defense and national security policy. And he's not qualified because of some of his comments on women serving in combat, which he has said women should not serve in combat, which is immediately disqualifying in my book.

I'm a former Army Ranger. I served three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. I served with women who fought for this country, who sacrificed for this country, in some cases died for this country. And for somebody to say that they're not qualified to serve in combat is just beyond the pale to me.

KEILAR: Yes, we can't forget there are female Rangers, which is pretty amazing.

And you're also on the Intel Committee. So let's talk about Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, Trump's pick for that. Many Democrats have questioned whether she's compromised, which is a huge allegation to make, whether she's actually been influenced by a foreign government.

Do you question that?

CROW: Yes, I do question that, actually, because you just look at her public statements. You look at her affinity for autocrats and dictators, whether it's Bashar al-Assad, whether it's Vladimir Putin, adversaries and enemies of the United States, war criminals.

She is somebody who has visited. She's gone to Syria and visited people in the Syrian regime. She's made very troubling statements about America's adversaries. And she doesn't actually have experience, right? She's unqualified because she doesn't have the experience running the nation's largest intelligence network.

Now, you don't have to have done that before. That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is, you should either have experience running large organizations, or you should know something about defense policy and national security, neither of which are true for her.

But then you add on top of that questions about her loyalty and questions about her integrity are concerning, because the director of national intelligence is responsible for overseeing our alliances, right? So we get a lot of intelligence to protect Americans from our allies.

There's an alliance called the Five Eyes relationship that we have with a couple of different countries. And we get intelligence that protects Americans from other countries. Those countries are not going to share intelligence with us if they don't have confidence that we're going to protect that information and honor it in the way that that alliance requires us to do so, which actually will make Americans far less safe.

KEILAR: Congressman Jason Crow, thanks for joining us this afternoon. We appreciate it.

CROW: Thank you.

KEILAR: And still ahead: a potentially major escalation in the war on Ukraine, some new questions on the type of missile that Russia launched overnight. It could be one new to this conflict.

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