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Senate Impeachment Timeline Remains Uncertain; Brexit Deadline Confirmed; American Diplomat's Wife Charged in Death of Harry Dunn; Morrison Chills While Australia Burns; India Citizenship Law; Blockbusters at the Box Office. Aired 3-3:30a ET

Aired December 21, 2019 - 03:00   ET

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

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MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello and welcome to our viewers all around the world, I'm Michael Holmes.

Here on CNN NEWSROOM, the U.S. president flies south for the holidays, as congressional leaders in Washington work on their impeachment strategies.

Warnings are in place across Australia as a blistering heat wave intensifies bush fires.

And deadly protests rage in India about the prime minister's new citizenship law. The country says no Indian should feel threatened by it.

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HOLMES: Welcome, everyone.

The center of Donald Trump's impeachment defense is shifting at least in terms of location. The president leaving behind the freezing weather of Washington for the much water warmer climes of south Florida, where he plans to spend two weeks for the holidays.

Several officials have quietly expressed concerns about the length of Mr. Trump's visit. The worry is, the longer he is there, the more opportunity outsiders will have to influence him or for news coverage to infuriate him.

Now back in Washington, White House attorneys and top Democrats are preparing to do battle at his impeachment trial in the Senate. Here's CNN's Jim Acosta.

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JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: (voice-over): Demanding to be declared innocent in the Ukraine scandal, President Trump is slamming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to hang on to the articles of impeachment on negotiations continue over the upcoming trial in the Senate. The president tweeted, "Actually, they have zero proof of anything,

they will never even show up. They want out. I want an immediate trial."

Mr. Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani told young conservatives at a Turning Point USA summit, Democrats are out for blood.

RUDY GIULIANI, DONALD TRUMP'S PERSONAL ATTORNEY: They want to put Barr in prison and they want to execute me. Good luck. I just get angrier and I go after you more.

ACOSTA: The president's daughter, Ivanka, concedes her father is upset.

IVANKA TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP'S DAUGHTER: Angry at the waste of time. Angry at the collateral damage. Angry -- but is still energizing and focuses you on really draws into relief the stark contrast in priorities.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): The House will be in order.

ACOSTA: But Pelosi appears to be getting in some digs of her own inviting the president to deliver the State of the Union around the time of Mr. Trump's trial.

Writing in a letter "In the spirit of respecting our Constitution, I invite you to deliver your State of the Union Address before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, February 4th, 2020."

But an expert witness for the Democrats during the inquiries warning Pelosi should get on with it. Writing in an op-ed, "If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn't actually impeached the president."

Democrats aren't buying that.

REP. NORMA TORRES (D-CA): Absolutely. You know after the vote that we took on the floor and you know the majority of Congress voted to impeach the president. He has absolutely been impeached.

ACOSTA: As Christmas is approaching, the president is all but saying "bah humbug" to the religious publication "Christianity Today" which is calling for Mr. Trump's removal over his actions in Ukraine. The president blasted the website as a far left magazine but that is not true according to its editor.

MARK GALLI, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, "CHRISTIANITY TODAY": It is factually inaccurate that we're far left. We're pretty centrist. We rarely comment on politics unless we feel it rises to the level of some national or concern that is really important and this would be a case.

ACOSTA: Mr. Trump tweeted, "The fact is, no president has ever done what I have done for Evangelicals, or religion itself."

But while the president is popular among Christian conservatives he rarely attends church and has at times puzzled his own faithful, whether by signing Bibles or misquoting passages from the scripture.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: II Corinthians 3:17, that is the whole ball game.

ACOSTA: Now the president is tweeting about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, insisting she should be impeached for demanding a fair trial in the Senate. And even with all of that friction tonight, the president has accepted Pelosi's invitation to deliver the State of the Union in early February.

But that could be messy if the impeachment trial is still underway -- Jim Acosta, CNN, the White House.

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HOLMES: Joining me now, Ron Brownstein. He's a senior analyst and senior editor at "The Atlantic."

Good to see you, sir. If Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell are both apparently fine with a delay in sending the impeachment on to the Senate but Donald Trump is reportedly livid.

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HOLMES: Does that mean that Nancy Pelosi's winning?

She's pretty good at getting under the president's skin.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: This is a point of leverage for the House in the sense it can focus public attention on some of the remarkable things that Mitch McConnell has said. "I am not impartial juror."

But the leverage only goes so, far. In the end they have to submit this to the Senate and, in fact, many Democrats want to go through this process but they don't want to be it to be dragging on far into the election year. They'd rather get back to some of the bread and butter issues they were elected on.

So there's a certain amount of pressure but there's only so much pressure that you can bring on. The bigger pressure will be what will the Republicans in the swing states believe puts him in the best position to win reelection.

HOLMES: Well, to that point, what do you think the odds are that some Republicans -- Mitt Romney and others -- three four five some might think, that are uneasy about the president's behavior. Who might think about their place in history. And perhaps not vote the way that Mitch McConnell may expect.

Is it possible, likely even?

BROWNSTEIN: It's possible; I don't know if it's likely, we haven't really seen anything like that a lot of profiles in courage. And one of the things that is most -- I was listening to great interest by that reporter about Moscow, there is a bipartisan bill in the Senate, that McConnell is blocking from reaching the floor, that would impose stiff automatic sanctions on Russia if they get involved in the elections again in 2020.

And even on that we are not seeing Republicans force McConnell's hand. He is doing the bidding of the White House. It is possible that they will force him to make some adjustments in his plan for the trial. But whether they would join with the Democrats to demand live witnesses, seems a big step.

HOLMES: You touched on this, how damaging is it to the process, the constitutional process, when the Senate majority leader admits he's working with and for the president rather than at least attempt impartiality, especially when you think that Republicans pushed for what they are now opposed to when it came to Bill Clinton.

BROWNSTEIN: One-third of the Republicans in the House Judiciary Committee voted for impeachment of Nixon. And a delegation of senior Republicans going to the White House convinced him to resign.

By the time we got to Bill Clinton in 1998, we were in a much more partisan era. But there were still five Democrats that voted for impeachment and enough Republicans voted against it that two of the articles from the Judiciary Committee were defeated on the floor.

And there were a large number of Democrats in both chambers who criticized Bill Clinton's behavior, even though they didn't vote to remove him from office.

Fast forward to 2019 and, after some initial kind of rumblings, what was interesting about the House proceedings is that some of the Republicans said that this didn't even rise to the level of removal of the president and in lockstep they said he did nothing wrong. They echoed White House talking points, Putin conspiracy theories.

They locked arms around Trump in every possible way. And that is what we've seen from McConnell and Graham and probably what we will see from most of the Republican senators.

The question you correctly raise, are there five or six Republican senators that don't want to go that far, given the pressures that they are facing in the party?

Whether they'll go as far as the House in repeating Kremlin talking points, essentially saying this behavior is fine, we don't know. One thing we know, if every Republican in both chambers votes to say there is nothing here to sanction, the president will feel emboldened to go further.

HOLMES: He retweeted a report that quotes Vladimir Putin as saying the impeachment was unfair. Pretty extraordinary. Ron Brownstein, thank you. Appreciate it.

BROWNSTEIN: Thank you, Michael.

HOLMES: Now CNN has learned that Ukraine became an issue in a budget debate that could have led to a potential government shutdown. At the center of it all was a year-ending spending bill, multiple people involved in the talks say, the White House insisted that House Democrats drop language regarding a quick timeline on deploying aid or risk a veto.

The issue was eventually resolved, as Democrats backed down and those involved acknowledged that the White House's position wasn't viewed as out of line and that the limits Democrats were trying to put into place cut into executive authority.

British lawmakers are finally approved the Brexit deal for Boris Johnson.

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HOLMES: It is the first step toward fulfilling the prime minister's election promise to deliver the U.K.'s departure from the E.U. by January 31st.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The ayes to the right for 358, the nos to the left for 234. So the ayes have it. The ayes have it. Unlock

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HOLMES: You hear there the bill passing overwhelmingly on Friday. Thanks to Johnson's new conservative majority in Parliament post- election.

Well, North Korea has a new warning for the U.S., it is demanding that Washington mind its own business when it comes to human rights. The foreign ministry accuses a U.S. diplomat of making reckless remarks in a "Voice of America" interview this week, saying it is like pouring oil over a burning fire.

The statement goes on to say, quote, "If the U.S. dares to impair our system by taking issue over the human rights issue, it will be made to pay dearly for such an act."

British authorities have filed wrongful death charges against the wife of an American diplomat whose car struck and killed a British teenager last August. It's not clear if the U.S. will grant an extradition request but it is unlikely, in part because of the long prison sentence she could face. Brian Todd reports.

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BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tonight, the wife of a man being described as an American diplomat is being charged with causing death by dangerous driving after a head-on collision which killed British teenager Harry Dunn.

Dunn was riding his motorcycle in August just outside a military base in England controlled by the U.S. Air Force. Authorities say Anne Sacoolas was driving on the wrong side of the road. Dunn's parents are relieved with the new charges. TIM DUNN, FATHER OF HARRY DUNN: We set out for this to happen, for a charge to be brought from the start. And today, we've got what we set out to get.

CHARLOTTE CHARLES, MOTHER OF HARRY DUNN: We feel that we have taken a huge step in the start of achieving the promise to Harry that we made.

TODD (voice-over): But the parents realize part of the promise to Harry may not be kept. Shortly after the accident, Anne Sacoolas cooperated with British authorities, but then she lawyered up, claimed diplomatic immunity. And three weeks after the accident, she bolted, fleeing Britain for the U.S.

British prosecutors say they'll try to get her extradited. But tonight, the State Department says it's disappointed by the decision to charge Anne Sacoolas, that it will not bring a resolution closer.

Sacoolas' lawyer says she extends condolences to the Dunn family, but she won't voluntarily return to Britain. The lawyer says this was an accident and a criminal prosecution with a potential penalty of 14 years imprisonment is simply not a proportionate response.

The Dunn family spokesman is outraged.

RADD SEIGER, SPOKESMAN FOR THE FAMILY OF HARRY DUNN: The accused, who is not guilty of anything until convicted, doesn't get to say, I'm not going to cooperate with the legal process because the penalty is too harsh.

TODD (voice-over): Key questions tonight, whether Anne Sacoolas is being protected by the U.S. government and could that be because of her husband's job?

Despite the claim that Sacoolas' husband Jonathan is a diplomat, CNN has found no indication that he worked at the U.S. embassy in Britain.

The Air Force base near where the accident occurred, RAF Croughton, run by the U.S. Air Force is not an intelligence base, experts say, but --

CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: What it does handle is the communications from intelligence agencies to other parts of the world. It is a main switching center for communications from the continental United States, to Europe and the Middle East.

TODD (voice-over): The Dunn family spokesman says he's been told by sources in Washington what Jonathan Sacoolas does.

SEIGER: We have been told he is a technical intelligence officer. I'm not exactly clear what that is, but they're -- you know, that can be the only connection.

TODD (voice-over): Aside from statements from their lawyer, CNN has not been able to get comment from Anne or Jonathan Sacoolas. The CIA and the National Intelligence Director's Office would not comment when we asked if Jonathan Sacoolas works for U.S. intelligence. The NSA told the "Washington Examiner" he doesn't work for that agency.

This case may eventually end before a federal judge to decide whether Anne Sacoolas is going to be extradited to Great Britain. Analysts say the U.S. and Britain have had an extradition treaty for more than 100 years. And they say it is exceedingly rare for America to ever deny Britain an extradition request -- Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

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HOLMES: The Carnival cruise ship damaged in a collision with another Carnival vessel is heading back to its new home port of New Orleans. I'll show you video. You can see the ship smashing into the other as it maneuvered into the port in Cozumel, Mexico. Carnival said six people suffered some minor injuries.

The cruise line believes spontaneous wind gusts and strong currents are to blame for the collision. The company provided passengers with a $100 per room onboard credit for the inconvenience.

Spectacular and unbelievable.

We'll take a break. When we come back, bush fires in Australia growing more intense, we will have more on the catastrophic conditions that have turned deadly there.

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HOLMES: Strong winds and scorching temperatures are creating catastrophic conditions in parts of Australia as thousands of firefighters battle more than 100 fires. The prime minister of Australia says he will return home after vacationing in Hawaii as the nation mourns two volunteer firefighters killed south of Sydney. Authorities say their truck rolled off the road after it was hit by a tree.

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HOLMES: An act of defiance, large crowds in India have again refused to acknowledge a ban on public gatherings as they continue to protest their controversial citizenship law. We'll have a report from New Delhi coming up.

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(MUSIC PLAYING) HOLMES: Demonstrators flooded the streets of Lebanon on Friday as anti-government protests rage on. Protesters have been clashing with police since Hezbollah-backed Hassan Diab was named as the next prime minister on Thursday.

In his first interview since becoming Lebanese prime minister designate, Diab insisted he's not affiliated with anyone.

Protests in India aren't letting up. Demonstrators returning to the streets across the country on Friday, defying government efforts to stifle the backlash over the controversial new citizenship law, hundreds gathering outside police headquarters in New Delhi to reject the measure and protest against alleged police brutality. Vedika Sud reports from the Indian capital.

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VEDIKA SUD, JOURNALIST: Over a week since protesters have been speaking out against the controversial citizenship act and we're here standing outside the Delhi police headquarters in central Delhi.

Behind me are hundreds of protesters, mostly young students and lawyers, protesting against the alleged brutal force used by the police on Friday evening. We believe some protesters from Central Delhi have tried to break the barriers set up by the New Delhi police and that's when the police resorted to firing water cannons at them.

According to the protesters outside the Delhi police headquarters, about 30 protesters have been detained. Friday morning was a time when after Friday prayers, a mosque in Delhi very well known was where thousands of people had gathered to raise their voice against the citizenship bill.

Activists in the main opposition party, they are saying it's unconstitutional as well as draconian. This morning the prime minister did attend a business summit in the national capital. Everyone was expecting a word on this controversial bill but he only spoke economics -- Vedika Sud in New Delhi.

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HOLMES: Well, it's finally here but "The Rise of Skywalker" is suffering the wrath of critics. That's next on CNN NEWSROOM.

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HOLMES: Two of the most anticipated films of the year are in theaters now. You can glide through the galaxy in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" or you can slink down the alley with the characters of "Cats." Lynda Kinkade tells us what to expect. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LYNDA KINKADE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two blockbuster fantasy movies head to the box office this weekend.

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KINKADE (voice-over): "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" debuts in theaters this week. It's the last film of George Lucas' beloved space saga, which began in 1977. It introduced this world to characters from a galaxy far, far away that would carry generations of fans through nine films.

Now more than 40 years since the original, one of the stars of the final trilogy says she's happy with how it all ends.

DAISY RIDLEY, ACTOR: Yes, yes, it was amazing doing it. Even before I watched the film, I felt very satisfied.

KINKADE (voice-over): Critics aren't as starstruck; of all the "Star Wars" films, "The Rise of Skywalker" has some of the worst reviews since the 1999 film, "The Phantom Menace." Director J.J. Abrams says ending a series is never easy.

J.J. ABRAMS, DIRECTOR: Even though you know every choice you make will please some people and piss off other people, you have to just do what you believe at every step.

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KINKADE (voice-over): The movie version of the stage show, "Cats," also pounces into theaters this weekend, it's based on the musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and features an all-stars cast, including Taylor Swift, Judy Dench and Idris Elba.

But some critics are wondering if this telling of "Cats," directed by Tom Hooper, has used up all its nine lives with some critics calling it a cat-astrophe, others using the word "hairball" to describe it -- Lynda Kinkade, CNN.

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HOLMES: Well, that's popping off both of them, then, all right.

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HOLMES: Thanks for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Michael Holmes I'll be back with headlines.

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