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White House Declines to Participate in Judiciary Committee Hearing; Lisa Page Issues Public Statement; Leaked Chinese Documents Confirm Uyghur Human Rights Abuses. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired December 02, 2019 - 10:30   ET

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

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[10:30:56]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: All right. So the president, headed to the NATO summit. He spoke just moments ago, as he boarded Marine One. He's headed for London. He talked about the impeachment inquiry and the process. Our Boris Sanchez is at the White House, Phil Mattingly on Capitol Hill.

Boris, let me just begin with you. What did the president say?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Poppy, the president came out and boasted about the U.S. economy before making a complaint that his White House Counsel Pat Cipollone made in his letter to Chairman Jerry Nadler, declining the opportunity for White House attorneys to participate in Wednesday's hearing, impeachment hearing before the Judiciary Committee.

The president, saying that Democrats specifically scheduled that hearing at a time when he is going to be abroad. The president, of course, headed to London to take part in a NATO leaders' meeting on the 70th anniversary of an alliance that he's called obsolete.

Now, the president was asked, why are White House lawyers not participating in that Wednesday hearing? Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The whole thing is a hoax, everybody knows it. All you have to do is look at the words of the Ukrainian president that he just issued, and you know it's a hoax. It's an absolute disgrace, what they're doing to our country. Thank you --

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President --

TRUMP: -- thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Of course, President Zelensky of Ukraine gave an interview in which he effectively said that withholding aid from a strategic partner would be unfair. This isn't really a big surprise, that the White House is not participating in this process, or at least in this hearing. Of course, the president and his allies have made the argument that this is an unfair process: participating in it would delegitimize that argument -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Boris, thank you very much. Let's go to Phil Mattingly.

So, Phil, the -- Pat Cipollone, the president, this isn't fair, this isn't fair, the Dems get a bunch of lawyers, we only get one. Just -- I mean, isn't this par for the course? You're the majority, you get more witnesses? That's how this thing works?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, basically. I mean, I've been up here for about a decade, watched a lot of hearings with both Republicans and Democrats in the majority, and the majority party will get more witnesses at their hearings. That's just kind of the way it happens.

I think the interesting element here is, one, the president repeating what Pat Cipollone, the White House Counsel, said in his letter last night, that he believes this is intentional because he's going to be overseas. I haven't gotten any word that that's actually the case from Democrats.

This has long been their timeline that they've been working towards, the idea that the Intelligence Committee report would -- they're going to review it tonight, it will come out tomorrow, they'll vote on it tomorrow and then immediately start the Judiciary hearings. That's kind of always been the way it was going to go.

But what this does do is, it fits quite nicely into the White House narrative, that this is just a Democratic process that's not paying any attention to Republican concerns, that it's a process the Democrats have essentially already rigged in their favor and there's no need for the White House to participate.

But that cuts both ways to some degree, Poppy. You've obviously been paying close attention to this throughout, and the White House decision not to participate, not to allow witnesses to claim absolute immunity for all of their individuals, has given Democrats the rationale of, look, we don't need to wait. If you're not going to --

HARLOW: Right.

MATTINGLY: -- participate, we're just going to move forward and you might find your name in a draft article of impeachment related to obstruction.

And so it cuts both ways here, but you see the messaging effort here from the White House is pretty darn clear as they move forward, even if they're not going to participate at least in this first hearing -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Oh, it's very clear. Phil, thank you very much for the reporting. Boris, to you as well, we appreciate it. [10:34:03]

Ahead for us, for years, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page didn't speak out at all. She didn't respond to any of the president's repeated attacks. That has all changed, she is now speaking her mind. What she says was the tipping point.

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HARLOW: After years of silence, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page is speaking out. She's opening up about being the president's constant target. Let me read you part of this interview she gave to "The Daily Beast."

Quote, "I had stayed quiet for years hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse... It had been so hard not to defend myself, to let people who hate me control the narrative. I decided to take my power back."

Page became a talking point for the president after text messages between her and former FBI agent Peter Strzok showed their criticism of then-Candidate Donald Trump. But she says it was this moment just a few weeks ago that prompted her to speak out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I love you, Peter. I love you, too, Lisa. Lisa, I love you. Lisa, Lisa! Oh, God, I love you, Lisa.

(LAUGHTER)

And if she doesn't win, Lisa, we've got an insurance policy, Lisa.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Let's talk about this, big picture. Former FBI senior intelligence advisor, CNN counterterrorism analyst Phil Mudd is here. Phil, you know what it's like to be under attack personally from the president. So --

[10:40:04]

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Yes.

HARLOW: -- with that in mind --

MUDD: Yes.

HARLOW: -- let me read part of this interview that struck us so much, about Page really feeling abandoned by the bureau, by the Department of Justice. Quote, "It's very painful to see places like the FBI and the Department of Justice that represent so much of what is excellent about this country, not fulfilling the critical obligation that they have to speak truth to power...

"So it's particularly devastating to be betrayed by an organization I still care so deeply about. And it's crushing to see the noble Justice Department, my Justice Department, the place I grew up in, feel like it's abandoned its principles of truth and independence."

What's your read?

MUDD: Well, I think there's two sides of this. Look, at a personal level, the president should never, never attack an American citizen in a tweet in that mocking tone or in front of an audience, as he did.

As you mentioned, he came after me in just one single tweet, denigrating me. The flood of hate mail I got -- and you've got to sort through this, as you know, Poppy, to determine whether anybody --

HARLOW: Yes.

MUDD: -- writing in actually has the intent to show up on your doorstep. The flood of hate mail was amazing. So personally, he ought to stop it. Professionally, I think she did something wrong and she's got to pay a price for it.

HARLOW: So, talk about that. What are -- I mean, she says very clearly in this interview, she does not believe she violated the Hatch Act at all, she was making personal statements. They had nothing to do with her job, she's maintaining. We're going to get the Horowitz, the I.G. report on all of this, on Monday. What's your read?

MUDD: I think the I.G.'s going to come after her heavy and hard. The question is not whether she committed an illegal act, that's separate and beyond what the I.G. would look at. The question is whether she acted appropriately during an investigation.

Look, she's allowed, around the dinner table or out with friends, to say whatever she wants. If she's communicating in electronic message, especially if she's using any government computer or cell phone, if she's communicating in any message about the investigation and suggesting she's got a bias against somebody who's under investigation, that's not appropriate.

I can't believe in the inspector general's going to let her off the hook. But that's not a question of whether she did something illegal, that's a simple question about whether the investigation was conducted cleanly. And clearly, it doesn't look like it was.

HARLOW: What are you looking for as we wait for that I.G. report to come out? We know some details of it have been -- have been leaked. But I guess I'm wondering, what are the biggest questions on your mind?

MUDD: I'm going to watch -- the political piece is what I'll be watching. I think we've seen some reporting about what the report will say, the predication -- that's a technical word, but in my world it's really important, that is the basis for investigation -- it sounds like the inspector general's going to say, this had a sound basis. The investigation should have gone forward. So the Democrats will pick up on that, and I think ignore the fact that some of the details here, like the Strzok-Page communications, were not appropriate. They're embarrassing for anybody involved in an investigation.

On the other side, the Republicans will ignore the fact, I suspect, that the inspector general, if he says that -- if the inspector general says there is sound basis for this, they're going to focus on all the noise in the report. This was an embarrassing moment for the FBI but the foundation of the investigation was sound. I don't think professionally it's that interesting, but the politicians are going to go nuts.

HARLOW: Phil Mudd, thank you very much for all of that. We appreciate it --

MUDD: Thank you.

HARLOW: -- we'll see you very soon.

[10:43:26]

U.S. lawmakers want to take action as human rights catastrophes continue to unfold in China. Up to two million Muslims, who are the Uyghur population there, have been placed in secret detention centers. Now we're learning the decision to do that comes from the highest levels of the Chinese government.

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HARLOW: Welcome back. This is a really important story that we should all pay a lot of attention to: what is happening in China right now. As many as two million Muslims have been pulled from their homes and forced into detention centers.

Chinese officials defend it all, they call these camps voluntary job training centers. But a trove of leaked classified documents show a system of reprogramming designed to erase an entire ethnic minority. Our Will Ripley is with me, live from Hong Kong, now.

Will, I'm so glad you did this reporting because you look at these documents, and they reveal that the decision to target the Uyghur minority population came from the very top of the government in Beijing.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. These were inspired by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, who gave some very specific instructions when he gave speeches after China was targeted in a series of deadly terror attacks five years ago, and it just underscores the difference between how an authoritarian government like China handles terror, and a country like the United States.

But the bigger picture, according to human rights groups, are these people who are being taken from their homes without any say whatsoever. And the Chinese government for a long time has put out these propaganda videos, showing that they actually have a very happy life at these camps that they're being sent to.

And the handful of people who managed to escape, it was kind of like their word versus the Chinese government, until these documents and this new information, which just tends to unravel that whole narrative that Beijing has spent so much time carefully crafting.

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RIPLEY (voice-over): China doesn't want you to know the secret behind these walls: men, women, children, sometimes entire families separated from each other, cut off from the outside world.

[10:50:09]

The U.S. State Department says they live in prison-like conditions, locked up not for what they did but who they are, members of Muslim minority groups from Xinjiang Province in China's far west. Why they're kept here is a carefully guarded secret. And if China finds the person who leaded more than 400 pages of government documents to "The New York Times," they could disappear too.

AUSTIN RAMZY, HONG KONG CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: This person is a member of the Chinese political establishment who wanted the leadership to be held accountable for the decisions that were made in Xinjiang.

RIPLEY (voice-over): Decisions made by Chinese President Xi Jinping, implicated in the mass roundup for the first time, what the U.S. calls the "mass arbitrary detention" and "enforced disappearance" of more than "two million people," a massive effort to reprogram an entire ethnic group: Muslim Uyghurs.

China blamed the Uyghurs for deadly terror attacks five years ago, attacks that killed scores of people. That same year, 2014, President Xi made a series of speeches calling for a crackdown on separatists. Show "absolutely no mercy," he said in one speech. This video from Xinjiang suggests that's exactly what's happening: men with their hands bound, heads shaved and blindfolded at a train station.

CNN is not able to independently verify this video or when it was taken, but two former detainees from Xinjiang told CNN the same thing happened to them. They describe being herded together with other inmates, moved from jail to jail.

The Chinese government initially denied the camps exist. Now, it calls them voluntary vocational training centers, teaching people how to integrate into Chinese society.

GULCHEHRA HOJA, REPORTER, RADIO FREE ASIA: Jinping's dream is one nation, one country.

RIPLEY: What happens to people who don't fit into President Xi's dream?

HOJA: So they've been tortured, they've been starvation. Their life is like unimaginable. This is my brother --

RIPLEY (voice-over): This Uyghur journalist, now in the United States, says her brother has been missing in Xinjiang for more than a year. She burst into tears as soon as our interview ended, pain shared by every family torn apart. Someone they love vanished, no message, no warning, gone.

MIKE POMPEO, SECRETARY OF STATE: These reports are consistent with an overwhelming and growing body of evidence that the Chinese Communist Party is committing human rights violations and abuses against individuals in mass detention.

RIPLEY (voice-over): Tough talk from the Trump administration as the president praised Xi just this week.

TRUMP: I have a very good relationship, as you know, with President Xi, we're in the final throes of a very important deal.

RIPLEY (voice-over): China's human rights record has been a focus of six months of violent protests in Hong Kong. U.S. lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a bill supporting human rights in the Chinese territory. The president signed the bill on Wednesday.

CNN examined other secret Chinese government documents leaked by an investigative consortium. Guards are told, "Never allow escapes." Detainees "may not contact the outside world." China's ambassador to the U.K. calls the mounting evidence pure fabrication.

LIU XIAOMING, CHINESE AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED KINGDOM: There's no so-called labor camps. The government gave them opportunity to learn the language, Mandarin, you know, to be a good citizen, an effective worker.

RIPLEY (voice-over): That cheerfully woven narrative, unraveling with each new revelation shining light on a dark secret, what many believe is the Chinese president's plan to erase an entire culture.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RIPLEY: As we expected, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs categorically denying to CNN that it was involved in any human rights issues in Xinjiang, calling it counterterrorism and deradicalization measures instead.

And, Poppy, this just speaks to the fact that despite the mounting evidence, the Chinese government has its version of events, and they're sticking to it.

HARLOW: Wow. Will, again, as I said, I'm so glad you did this reporting. I know you'll stay on it. Before you go -- well, I think we're out of time. We'll have you back and we'll talk about what is happening in retaliation to the president signing that bill, supporting the Hong Kong protestors and human rights. Again, Will, great job. Thank you very much. [10:54:39]

Right now, the president is on his way to the NATO summit in London, leaving behind an impeachment inquiry on Capitol Hill that is set to make a pivotal turn this week. That's next.

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HARLOW: Winter has not officially arrived yet, but many parts of the country -- maybe you -- buried under mounds of snow.

Just today, airlines have delayed more than a thousand flights. More than 200 cancelled so far today. Several of the major carriers -- Delta, American, United, Southwest -- offering waivers for passengers who want to change or cancel their flights. Upstate New York, getting hit particularly hard, taking a pounding. And the National Weather Service says Albany was getting more than two inches of snow per hour this morning.

[11:00:02]

All right. Thanks for joining us today. Stay warm. I'm Poppy Harlow. "AT THIS HOUR" with Kate Bolduan starts now.