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First Sign of a Crack in Senate GOP's Defense of Trump?; Trump Again Attacking Pelosi, Dems Over Impeachment; Businesses Face Uncertainty After Workplace Raids in Mississippi. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired December 26, 2019 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: -- goes on to do. That would be -- that would be scary. I mean, having to rush to the hospital, a baby coming -- but we hear it happens all the time and that was good.

John, thanks so much.

JOHN AVLON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Always, friend. See you tomorrow.

CAMEROTA: I'll see you tomorrow. I'm going to really try to have some chicken soup right now. I'm going to be a lot better when you see me tomorrow.

AVLON: Take care.

CAMEROTA: OK.

AVLON: All right.

CAMEROTA: All right. That does it for us. "CNN NEWSROOM" begins right now.

RYAN NOBLES, CNN ANCHOR: All right, John and Alisyn. Thank you so much. And good morning. I'm Ryan Nobles. Poppy Harlow and Jim Sciutto off today.

This morning President Trump is once again hammering Democrats over the handling of the impeachment process. Slamming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Twitter. The latest salvo comes after one GOP senator, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, actually criticized members of both parties. She said she was disturbed by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's coordination with the White House. But she also slammed the House Democrats' investigation as rushed and incomplete.

And as Democrats try to convince Republicans to turn on the president, some GOP senators think it will actually be Senate Democrats who break from their party.

Let's start with CNN congressional reporter Lauren Fox. She is up on probably a very quiet Capitol Hill this morning.

Lauren, this one senator we're keeping an eye on is the moderate Maine Republican Susan Collins. The president, though, expressing support for her re-election campaign on Twitter. What's going on?

LAUREN FOX, CNN POLITICS CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, certainly the president seems to be launching a charm offensive for Susan Collins. That's a moderate Republican who, of course, he hopes to keep on his side as this impeachment grows with more fervor in the Senate. Now we still don't know when the Senate trial is going to take place. We expect that McConnell and Schumer are going to have to negotiate some kind of resolution once the senators return in January from their two-week recess.

But there are some senators to watch. Susan Collins among them. Lisa Murkowski who you mentioned who was critical of both McConnell and the House Democrat strategy in their impeachment push over in the House of Representatives. You also have some Democrats that are going to be worth watching. And here's why. You have some moderates like Joe Manchin who has worked with the president in the past, has had a good relationship with him.

And Kyrsten Sinema who is a Democrat from Arizona but somebody who, when you watch her on the floor, she has close relationships with both Republicans and Democrats. And then, of course, Doug Jones who is a Democrat from Alabama who is up for re-election in 2020. So a lot of lawmakers to be watching but we still need to understand how and when the Senate trial is going to begin -- Ryan.

NOBLES: All right. Lauren Fox setting the stage for us there on Capitol Hill. Lauren, thank you so much.

Meanwhile, President Trump has spent much of this morning sounding off on Twitter over impeachment.

Let's go now to CNN correspondent Kristen Holmes. She is traveling with the president in West Palm Beach.

Kristen, what is the president talking about this morning?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Ryan. I just want to note here it's just a mere hours after President Trump released his Christmas message in which he called on Americans to foster a culture of deeper understanding and respect that he was back on Twitter. He was bashing Nancy Pelosi. He called her crazy and he really lit into the process which he has continued doing today.

He said there was no due process, that Pelosi shouldn't be able to impeach the president, that there were no witnesses. Why should the Senate now give the House what exactly they didn't have? Republicans didn't have during the impeachment. Now of course we know a lot of this is not true. Witnesses were blocked by the White House from testifying. And the president was offered for the Judiciary Committee to have counsel and they rejected it.

But while the president fumes on Twitter, behind the scenes we know White House aides are preparing for that impending trial. Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel who is expected to lead the president's defense team, is anticipated to be here in Mar-a-Lago we assume to work on that impeachment behind closed doors. They're also expecting several of President Trump's big top aides, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

NOBLES: All right, Kristen Holmes, live in West Palm Beach. Kristen, we appreciate it. Thank you so much.

All right. Let's talk more about this now. We have a great panel of experts here on this boxing day. Margaret Talev, the politics and White House editor for Axios, Doug Heye, former communications for the Republican National Committee, and Michael Zeldin, a former special assistant to Robert Mueller at the Justice Department.

All right, Margaret, let's start with Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who obviously gave an interview to a local television station up there in Alaska that is catching the attention of people across the country. Listen to what she had to say yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): In fairness, when I heard that, I was disturbed. To me, it means that we have to take that step back from being hand-in-glove with the defense. And so, I -- I heard what Leader McConnell had said. I happen to think that that has further confused the process.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[09:05:08]

NOBLES: So, Margaret, we always kind of assumed that Murkowski might be a potential Republican that could break away from the president and Senate leadership on all of this. What can we make of her comments here?

MARGARET TALEV, POLITICS AND WHITE HOUSE EDITOR, AXIOS: Yes, Ryan, I think this is Lisa Murkowski sending up a signal pretty clearly to Mitch McConnell, not that she would vote, you know, to convict President Trump in the impeachment case, but that she thinks kind of a reset, at least of the kind of order of this, of the optics of this and of the way senators speak about whether they've already made up their minds before the Senate trial portion of this begins.

I mean, that's what she's saying. And there may be other Senate Republicans who would follow with her in that block. And we talk a lot about, does Nancy Pelosi have any leverage with Mitch McConnell to force him to adjust the way the Senate proceeds? This is an example of how that leverage might exist. I think it's still too soon to really understand what it is Pelosi is asking for and what it is that Mitch McConnell might be willing to give.

But with Murkowski's comments you begin to see some of the dynamics of how the Senate is a different body than the House and whether senators, Republican senators, are really prepared to be appearing to be in lockstep with the president before the Senate trial portion of this even begins.

NOBLES: And Doug, to Margaret's point here, this is really two different conversations, right? There's the conversation about whether or not you could find any Republicans that would break away and vote to convict the president versus just setting the rules for the trial, which is, of course, an important stage in all of this. But would only require a 51-vote majority. So that's where we start to look for some of these Republicans that could break away.

And we really have the Kavanaugh confirmation, right, as a model for all of this. We saw several moderate Republicans, Murkowski being among them, Maine Senator Susan Collins, Jeff Flake who's no longer in the Senate from Arizona. They all expressed verbal frustrations but they ultimately came around and sided with the Republican Party.

Could that play out the same way here?

DOUG HEYE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: No question about it. One thing that senators or all politicians like to do is to try and position themselves to look reasonable, to look thoughtful, regardless of what their ultimate decision may be. Whether or not that decision has already been made in advance. And I think it also highlights -- you know, we talk about this being a trial which is true in sorts. But this is a political process as much as it is -- much more so than it is a legal process.

So the Senate will determine its own rules. Senators will make their own decision or have made their own decision on how they'll vote. And that's a political process. It's a political decision. And viewing it in the lens of a typical courtroom case just doesn't apply here.

NOBLES: So Michael, let's talk now about the president's legal strategy. We saw him this week, photos of President Trump over Christmas break. He was talking with attorney Alan Dershowitz at Mar- a-Lago on Christmas Eve. There is some speculation out there that Dershowitz could formally join Trump's impeachment defense team.

Would that change the Trump legal dynamic if Dershowitz were to join up and help the president out here?

MICHAEL ZELDIN, FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO ROBERT MUELLER AT JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: Well, Dershowitz brings, you know, decades of constitutional knowledge. He is way more experienced in the matter of constitutional law than is Cipollone. So to the extent that there is a discussion at all about what the Constitution requires for there to be a conviction on articles of impeachment, Dershowitz would be an asset to them.

With respect to the trial of the matter in the Senate, I don't think that that's Alan's strength as much as it is his constitutional appellate, sort of acumen. But, you know, it brings gravitas to the process.

I think, though, the real issue still here is, will this trial have witnesses? That's the heart of the matter. If the president gets to stonewall in the House and then McConnell gets to facilitate that stonewalling in the Senate, so there is a trial that really has no firsthand knowledge based witnesses, then we don't really have a trial at all. Whether it's a political process, as Doug suggests, which is correct or, you know, quasi legal practice which it also is, without real witnesses, it's really just a bit of a sham.

NOBLES: And, of course, Margaret, that seems to be the impasse right now for Nancy Pelosi, right? Whether or not it would become more of a legal proceeding as opposed to a political matter and witnesses are at the core of that. As a result, that's one of the reasons that she's holding on to these articles of impeachment. We don't expect any movement on that until after the holiday.

From your perspective, how long can she hold out before formally handing this process over to Mitch McConnell?

TALEV: Yes, well, there's just a -- there's a couple of sort of timing, you know, pieces that are going to play into her thinking in addition to how the public comes out of the holidays thinking about this. But one is the Iowa caucuses. They're like half a dozen.

[09:10:04]

There's like several people who are still in the Democratic contest who are also sitting members of the U.S. Senate and would be pulled into this. And there's also the president's State of the Union address. So those are two points I would look to. But I think she probably has a matter of a couple of weeks to figure out where this is going and whether there's going to be any movement.

At this point it doesn't seem that Mitch McConnell or the Senate is going to pursue a course of bringing in people like John Bolton or the acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. If that's not going to happen, then Democrats will have made a point and perhaps gotten some senators like Lisa Murkowski to agree to push for some documents to be released or something like that. But if there's not going to be any movement, I suspect this will not be an indefinite process, but we really probably need to wait until the holidays are over to get a sense of where those Democrats are.

NOBLES: So, Doug, at one point, Mitch McConnell suggested that he would just go alone. Not even worry about involving Chuck Schumer in this process. And he thought maybe he had the votes to push ahead with the Senate rules with just Republican support. The fact that we see someone like Murkowski kind of stepping out a little bit, does that make this a little bit more complicated for him? And is he going to be forced to involve Chuck Schumer in this process?

HEYE: Well, that's what he wants to avoid at all costs and it's why, you know, we've talked so much about who has leverage in this case. Mitch McConnell probably has more leverage than anyone else. But Lisa Murkowski is flexing some, which we haven't really seen in this process this far. That's why it's going to be a delicate negotiation among Republicans before it even gets to that process, I think.

NOBLES: Yes. So, Michael, on January 3rd, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals set to hear arguments in both the case related to House's access to the Mueller grand jury details as well as the case linked to the testimony of former White House counsel Don McGahn. Just put into context how significant will those hearings be? ZELDIN: So they are very significant if the House is going to

continue to proceed in investigating whether or not there was obstruction of justice. The McGahn testimony is relevant to whether or not the president ordered McGahn essentially to lie and cover up that lie in respect of his request to fire Mueller. In regard to the grand jury secrecy stuff, there is all the grand jury testimony that Mueller has.

The House has been issued the right to receive it by the lower court. It's now going to go to the appellate court, and what the House wants is to see the underlying witness statements before the grand jury to again determine whether or not there was any obstructive behavior that's actionable. Remember we've heard the House say that because these two articles of impeachment have been returned over to the -- or going to be turned over to the Senate, does that preclude them from doing additional articles of impeachment on obstruction of justice related to Mueller?

The House has won in both of those cases at the lower court level. They should win at the appellate level. Grand jury secrecy should go to the House when it's sitting in impeachment capacity and McGahn's testimony should go as well. So it's a big moment for everybody to see how these court decisions come out. But I expect that the information is going to go to the House and then we'll see what the house wants to do with it.

NOBLES: Right. OK. So, Margaret, finally, in the "Washington Post" yesterday, an article highlights the climate of mistrust and threats within the U.S. intel community in the wake of the Ukraine scandal. And I just want to focus in on this part related to top Russia expert Fiona Hill who reportedly has been getting weird calls to her home phone and she's even faced attacks from the far-right media.

Listen to this. "For Hill, the attacks were a continuation of an astonishing level of hostility that she witnessed during the two years she served in the White House. Trump loyalists drafted internal enemies lists, co-workers were purged and NSC security teams logged hundreds of external threats against Hill and other officials, all fueled by a steady stream of far-right smears." Among those, Alex Jones of Infowars attacking her.

Margaret, how can we depend on these foreign officials to do their jobs and do it objectively when they are being forced to constantly look over their shoulder at every turn?

TALEV: Yes, I think what's described there that's been happening with Fiona Hill is very real in her case and is a real failing of the administration to be able to protect her better. And this is going to be a real question for other experts, nonpartisan experts, who are asked to come in and to serve in this administration and perhaps in future administrations if there's a feeling that these are normally not really public figures.

They are staff and they intended historically to operate behind the scenes and have to be able to give their advice and consultations in an atmosphere where they're safe to go home and resume, you know, personal activities. And this is a real warning sign and it's something that should be taken very seriously.

[09:15:03]

NOBLES: Obviously, it's terrible for Fiona Hill, the situation she's dealing with. But you look at the future in terms recruiting talent, why would anybody want to put themselves through that? That's going to be a big problem down the road.

All right. We're going to have to leave it there. Terrific conversation, everyone.

Margaret Talev, Doug Heye, and Michael Zeldin, we appreciate you all being here. Thank you.

TALEV: Thank you.

NOBLES: Still to come -- I'll speak to a Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee. Should Democrats be worried about members of their party voting against impeaching President Trump in a Senate trial?

Plus, in the 2016 election, the gender gap between how men and women vote was historic. What will 2020 look like? We're breaking down the numbers.

And a small town in Mississippi will never be the same after sweeping immigration raids led to the arrest of nearly 700 undocumented workers. How things have changed there, next.

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[09:20:05]

NOBLES: A Mississippi town is still reeling months after a series of massive workplace immigration raids. Families say they're living in fear and businesses are struggling to stay afloat after nearly 700 mostly Latino workers were arrested on the job back in August.

CNN's Nick Valencia has more on the economic impact of what was described as the largest workplace sting in at least a decade.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK VALENCIA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Like so many others here, Sofia Hernandez is worried. Three years ago, she used the money she saved while working at the local chicken plants to buy this Mexican market. But now with business crippled by the ICE raids in August, she doesn't know if she'll be able to keep it open. She's had to cut the hours of her employees.

SOFIA HERNANDEZ, RESTAURANT OWNER (translated): Thanks to God, I'm surviving.

VALENCIA (on camera): Yes, you're worried? You're worried?

HERNANDEZ: Yes, some. Some because we don't know what's going to happen.

VALENCIA (voice-over): Latinos make up nearly a quarter of the more than 3,600 residents in Morton, Mississippi.

But looking at the streets, you wouldn't be able to tell. As rumor spread of another raid, most have chosen to spend their days in hiding.

In the nearly four months since the raids on chicken processing plants across six Mississippi cities, Miguel Tambrez's wife is among the dozens still detained, leaving him to care for their three children alone. Their daughter was just 4 months old when it happened. She was still nursing.

She cried and cried, he says of his baby. There were days when I was in such despair, but I had to keep on fighting for her, he says.

He's physically and mentally exhausted and so is his wife. Recently while in custody, she signed voluntary deportation orders. Soon, the family will be reunited again, but not in the United States.

It's not that it was hard for me. It still is hard for me, he says, about the financial burden of being the sole bread winner and now sole caretaker.

Those who were released from ICE custody with court dates were let go on the condition that they couldn't work and that makes it pretty hard to pay the bills, which means they'd have to rely on the kindness of others, including churches like this one. But even they don't know how much longer it will last.

Sheila Cumbest had only been pastor at the United Methodist Church in Morton for four weeks when the raids happened. Her life and her church have been consumed by the event ever since.

PASTOR SHEILA CUMBEST, MORTON METHODIST CHURCH: Just in Morton alone, we're helping 110, 115 families. Paying bills is expensive. So far the money we've spent is around $151,000 since the first week.

Every day, it's just facing the same sort of despair in people's lives. And wondering what's next.

VALENCIA: Even the mayor says the town has changed since the raids. He tells us the plant raided in Morton accounts for 45 percent of the city's revenue. A business powered by Latino labor. Despite what happened, he says, Latinos are still welcome in Morton.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Regardless, I mean, whether they are documented or undocumented, you should have compassion for your neighbor.

VALENCIA: But for the Latinos still left, the life they once saw for themselves here may no longer exist.

Nick Valencia, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE) NOBLES: Nick, thank you.

Initially after the raids, an ICE official told CNN that they were part of a broader criminal investigation going after the companies that employ undocumented labor. That case now in the hands of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi. CNN has made repeated requests to interview U.S. Attorney Mike Hearst. He's declined those requests and given no indication that the companies will be charged.

And just ahead, as lawmakers discuss how to break the impasse over the terms of the Senate impeachment trial, one Republican senator is speaking out against Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his coordination with the White House. We'll speak to a Democratic congressman about that, next.

And we are moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street. While stocks are expected to start the day after Christmas flat, it was likely a good holiday season for retailers. MasterCard said retail sales during the two months before Christmas rose 3.4 percent compared to last year. And Amazon says two of the most popular gifts under the tree this year were the Instant Pot pressure cooker and Roomba robot vacuum.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:29:12]

NOBLES: Lawmakers return to Capitol Hill January 6th. But while they've been on break, we've heard senators on both sides deviate from their party's messaging. Republican Lisa Murkowski said she's disturbed by Senator Mitch McConnell's coordination with the White House, and Democrat Doug Jones suggested the dots aren't connecting for him yet on a case against the president.

With me now to talk about this, Democratic congressman from Tennessee, Steve Cohen. He sits on the House Judiciary Committee. He's been heavily involved in the impeachment process.

Congressman, first, I want to ask you about what's happening in the Senate right now. Are you worried that all of the focus on recruiting Republicans to remove the president, that your party may have to persuade some moderate Democrats like Doug Jones who at this point don't appear to be in lockstep with leadership?

REP. STEVE COHEN (D-CT): Well, there are some difficult politician situations there. Doug Jones won a very difficult election, and Roy Moore helped him win it.

[09:30:00]