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House Votes To Limit Trump's War Powers Against Iran; Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): I'll Send Impeachment Articles Soon To Senate; New Video Shows Moment Ukrainian Plan Crashed In Tehran. Aired 10- 10:30a ET

Aired January 10, 2020 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: -- strategic partnership going forward and continuing not a withdrawal of U.S. forces.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Meantime, those protests are continuing. Look at that. Those are the streets of Baghdad this morning, where months' long demonstrations against the government are gaining new traction as tension rises. Their demand, an end to all outside influence on their country, they want sovereignty, including the very strong influence within Iraq from Iran and the United States.

SCIUTTO: The Senate will now take up that War Powers Resolution that would limit potential military actions against Iran by President Trump. The House passed it with some bipartisan support on Thursday, including a yes vote from key Trump ally, Republican Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz.

The Senate is waiting on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- remember this -- to turn over articles of Impeachment. Pelosi has held on to those articles for three weeks now, though she promises she will send them ever to the Senate soon.

I'm joined by Democratic Congressman Adam Smith, chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Congressman, thanks so much for taking the time this morning.

REP. ADAM SMITH (D-WA): Thanks for the chance, I appreciate it.

SCIUTTO: So, first, your comments yesterday on this network. You told my colleagues, first, "It is time to send the impeachment to the Senate, let Mitch McConnell be responsible for the fairness of the trial."

Soon after, you walked those comments back on Twitter and said that that is not what you should have tried or -- to convey. I'm just wondering, what were you trying to convey by saying it's time to send those articles over?

SMITH: I support the speaker's strategy, the effort to basically try to leverage the Senate into telling us what the trial is going to be and (ph) making sure there is a fair trial. I think it is the right strategy.

The disagreement in -- well, in my own head was, OK, how long do you let that strategy play out for. That's it.

And the speaker, I think, indicated shortly after I spoke yesterday that she, too, is to the point where she thinks, you know, we're going to keep doing it for a little while longer. So the basic agreement was -- you know, I'm perfectly content to wait another week or two to get there --

SCIUTTO: OK.

SMITH: And I just sort of messed up on the timing.

The strategy is absolutely correct. At some point, we do have to send it to the Senate but I have no problem with trying to leverage it in the meantime.

The question was more specific than that. It was just, is it time, and at some point, yes, that's the basic --

(CROSSTALK)

SCIUTTO: Stand by for a moment, because we do have breaking news on this very topic here from Capitol Hill. Manu Raju joins us live. Manu, an update on timing of the impeachment articles?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's not going to happen today. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, just told reporters that there will not be a vote in the House to name those impeachment managers who would prosecute the case over in the Senate. And that's important because Pelosi has said that the managers must be named before the articles are transmitted over to the Senate.

But she just said that she will -- there will not be a vote today on naming those managers. She said when she was asked about the timing of this, she said, I'll be communicating with my members and perhaps we'll see after that.

So it's significant because now it's (ph) -- we -- we're heading into the weekend. Lawmakers are expected to leave town after this morning's vote and then they're going to come back next week. And once again, the Senate will be in a state of limbo as they await the decision by the speaker about when to send over those articles of impeachment.

So it's uncertain right now as the speaker has demanded certain things from the Senate. Namely she -- right now, she wants to see the details of what the rule is about how the Senate procedures will play out.

Mitch McConnell told me last night he will not submit -- provide her that rule ahead of time, said that she knows essentially what that trial will look like. So the two are in a bit of a staring contest at the moment, Pelosi is signaling that she's not going to blink.

So we'll see, Jim, if she makes any moves over the weekend or indicates her plans. But right now, the House is expected to leave town without moving to send the articles over, Jim?

SCIUTTO: Manu Raju, thank you.

Congressman Adam Smith back with us now, and thank you for pausing for us. Of course, the news is coming in every moment now.

Let me ask immediately for your reaction to that. You just said that you did have some disagreement about the timing of this. What's to be gained by waiting beyond today?

(CROSSTALK)

SMITH: Sorry, I misunderstood the timing. I don't have a disagreement about the timing, I misunderstood the timing. I supported the strategy. I thought it was playing out sooner than it actually is.

No, I support what the speaker is doing. And I think Mitch McConnell --

SCIUTTO: Why, though? I just wonder why. Like why not send them over today if -- Mitch McConnell has -- in fact, as Manu said, he said he has no intention of sharing details on the rules prior to receiving the articles.

SMITH: Well, I don't think there is a rush at this point. If it's next week, it's next week.

I think the speaker is absolutely right to shine a bright light on the fact that Mitch McConnell is not having a fair trial in the Senate, won't even tell us what it is. He's coordinating with the White House. He's apparently not going to call witnesses, not going to have an open process.

So I absolutely support calling attention to Mitch McConnell's unfair process in the Senate.

[10:05:01]

At some point, I do think we have to send them over. But I'm willing to wait to see how that strategy plays out.

Now, you asked the right question. What's going to change? I don't know. I am not privy to the speaker's negotiations, to who she is talking to, to her conversations with Democratic and/or Republican senators. So she knows a lot more about where that strategy is going than I do and I'm willing to let her play that out to see what happens for those reasons.

SCIUTTO: I understand the intent to try to perhaps force Mitch McConnell's hands here. But it's been 24 days since the House voted to impeach the president. Now, we will add at least a couple more days to that, I presume, not sent until after the weekend at the earliest here.

What do Democrats gain from that delay? Certainly, at least (ph) no hard concessions for -- I mean, exposed but you haven't gotten -- you haven't got the changes to the trial that you've been looking for --

SMITH: Sure.

SCIUTTO: -- specifically a commitment for witnesses.

SMITH: The only two things I'll say about that is, first -- one that I already said, which is, shining a light on what Mitch McConnell is doing, I think, is absolutely worth doing to try to generate public pressure to get him to change his mind.

Second, I have negotiated with the Senate. Not long ago, we had an epic negotiation about the National Defense Authorizing (ph) Act. And for months, people said, well, the Senate is not going to give you what you want. What's the point?

Eventually, they did give me what I wanted. So sometimes it plays out over time and there is leverage that the outside world might not perceive that you have. And I'm willing to give speaker the chance to exercise that leverage. That's the basic point.

SCIUTTO: And we have heard a small number of Republican senators say they're at least open to the idea of witnesses --

SMITH: Exactly.

SCIUTTO: I want to move on, if I can, to the question of --

SMITH: Sure.

SCIUTTO: -- the War Powers Resolution, because that did pass yesterday with some Republican support as well.

But there has been some confusion about how legally binding it is based on the category of bill that was put in. Can you explain?

And again, it's not clear what happens in the Senate here. You might get some Republican senators but easily -- likely it will be -- could be easily vetoed by the president. Explain, was this about sending the message to the president or about legally binding his hands on military action against Iran?

SMITH: It was about legally asserting the Article I authority of the United States Congress to declare war. That's what it's about. It is meant to be legally binding. This is not a message bill. There are several other bills to do the same thing.

And this is something that evolved over decades, if not hundreds of years, that the president, the executive has increasingly ignored congressional power when it comes to declaring war, congressional power that's in the Constitution.

We have been sidelined from that process and we are trying to reassert our authority to the very solid reason that the people ought to have a voice in momentous decisions like this. The people most directly representative of the people, the United States Congress, House and Senate, we should be involved in that process. Regardless of what you think of the decision, it is wrong for the

Constitution to be ignored when making decision about going to war. And yesterday, we said if the president wants to do this, he needs to come to Congress. That is the legal requirement we're asking for.

And I applaud Matt Gaetz. Matt Gaetz serves on my Committee on Armed Services. I have worked with him on this issue. We had an amendment just like this in the National Defense Authorizing (ph) Act. That's one things that I was fighting for that we didn't get, to try to reassert Congressional authority.

SCIUTTO: Yes, and Gaetz one of the three Republicans, I believe, who did vote. And he said he did so despite the president's opposition to it.

But before I let you go, Iraq -- the Iraq prime minister has conveyed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that they want to begin talking about a process for removing U.S. troops from Iraq despite the fact that the fight against ISIS goes on.

The president has raised the possibility of imposing sanctions on U.S. ally, Iraq, in response to that to kind of force their hand. Would you support such a measure if Iraq demands the U.S. withdraw?

SMITH: I would not support sanctions. Look, this is an underreported part of this story, the consequences of the decision to kill Soleimani.

We have handed Iran a sort of backdoor victory here. Number one, there were protesters in the streets of Iran protesting their government, after the strike on Soleimani, now they're protesting the United States. The pressure is off of the Iranian government. Second, Iran wants us out of Iraq. This makes us getting out of Iraq much more likely.

This is a victory for Iran and, I think, a policy mistake for those reasons.

SCIUTTO: Congressman Adam Smith, a pleasure to have you on the program this morning.

SMITH: Thanks for the chance.

HARLOW: Really interesting interview with him.

Okay, so for more about what is going on in Iraq, given this request overnight, let's talk about all of this with former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder. Good morning, Ambassador. Thank you very much for being with Jim and me.

I guess let's just begin on Iraq's prime minister calling Pompeo last night and saying send a team over here to figure out how to get your troops out of here. Significant, where do you think this goes?

[10:10:00] IVO DAALDER, FORMER AMBASSADOR TO NATO: Well, it seems to be going in the way that the Iraqi parliament voted on last Sunday, which was that the U.S. troops have to leave Iraq. And we are there not because we occupy the country, we are not there because we have won some great victory, we are there because we have an agreement with the Iraqi government to be there. And if the Iraqi government, which controls the country, says it's time for you to leave, we don't really have an option other than figuring out how to leave in the safest and quickest possible way.

SCIUTTO: You know from your deep experience there that oftentimes in public, Iraqi politicians will demand the withdrawal, privately, they'll say to the Americans, hey, listen, we really actually want you to stay, do you see this as being a different moment in terms of Iraqi pressure here?

DAALDER: Well, the politics at the moment in Iraq is in a different direction. As Congressman Smith just said, a few weeks ago, we had large scale demonstrations against Iranian influence and the Iranian presence in Iraq, which included Shia forces within the country making those demands, including by going after the counsel general in the consulate in Najaf, the Iranian consulate. But now, the politics has shifted to the other side.

Does that mean that it is a definitive decision that the U.S. troops will have to leave? No. There is room here for negotiation. There is room for quiet talking. There is room for quiet diplomacy. It probably doesn't help if the president says that they have to pay for the airbase or they're going to have the toughest sanctions on Iraq if we're forced to leave. I think this is a time when the secretary of state may want to decide that it's time to go to Baghdad, have the kind of quiet conversations and see if we can salvage the situation. But we're in a bad situation.

HARLOW: We heard the president this week, Ambassador, talk about NATO. I'm going to quote what he said on Wednesday when he addressed the nation, quote, today, I'm going to ask NATO to become much more involved in the Middle East peace process. Given your role as former ambassador to NATO, given the president's repeated criticism of the institution, even questioning Article V, obviously, which was incredibly helpful to the United States after 9/11, if you're on the receiving end of that message from the president, what are you thinking?

DAALDER: Well, first, is what's the -- what is the getting more involved really mean. NATO does have a training mission inside Iraq and has had it for quite a long time. It was suspended for a while. But back even in the time that we were there under the Bush administration, NATO was involved in the training mission, continues to do that. It's possible that NATO could beef that up a little bit.

NATO is also involved as a participant in the counter-ISIS coalition. It provides NATO early warning aircraft and perhaps that can be stepped up.

But I think what the president is really getting at is something that's not going to happen. What he really wants is the Europeans to take over the military responsibility not only in Iraq, but throughout the region. He's been pushing the Europeans to do far more, he keeps on saying that Europe needs the oil, we don't need the oil. He made very clear the other day when -- I think yesterday when he said NATO needs to come in so we can leave.

So what he's really looking for is to disengage from the region. That's what he's wanted to do, that's what he did in Syria, it's what he might, in fact, do in Iraq and have the Europeans take primary responsibility for military security in the gulf. That would be a fundamental change in our policy over the last 40 to 50 years that I don't see the Europeans signing up to.

SCIUTTO: Let's talk about Iran here. The goal of maximum pressure on Iran effectively is to get Iran back to the negotiating table and the president said as much after the Soleimani strike, saying, listen, he's open to negotiations. Of course, Iran has rebuffed those calls over the last several months. Do you see, following this killing, the exchange of missiles, et cetera, do you see Iran moving on that, that perhaps they'll reach a point, especially given the economic pressure they're under to say, okay, maybe our only option here is to talk again?

DAALDER: No, I don't. And I think in many ways, the strike against Soleimani has made it less likely for the Iranians to come to the negotiating table. It strengthened the hard-liners inside Iran itself. It is very clear with the elections coming up for parliament and the president in the next few months that hard-liners are going to be winning those elections and that the forces who have wanted to engage in diplomacy, which, in fact, led to the 2015 nuclear deal with the previous administration that those forces have been significantly weakened, and that we now see a slow confrontation of the kind that led to the escalation of just last week.

[10:15:01]

That's the logic of the strategy that the president has embraced.

SCIUTTO: And a lot of folks said don't imagine for a moment that Iran's retaliation is necessarily over. It could take time and it could act in other ways. Ambassador Ivo Daalder, thank you so much.

DAALDER: Thank you.

HARLOW: We have some breaking news. Just moments ago, the Dow crossed 29,000, if you can believe it. That is a record high, hovering just below it now. Again, Jim, 29,000, this as the unemployment rate holds at a decades' low rate of 3.5 percent. This is good. But, again, only half of Americans invested in the market. It doesn't mean the same thing for everyone by any measure. But Dow at 29,000.

SCIUTTO: That's a record. We'll continue to watch the markets today.

Coming up next this hour, a stunning new video of the very moment a Ukrainian airliner with 176 passengers and crew on board crashed, shortly after taking off from the airport in Tehran, Iran. The video is just disturbing. We'll show it to you and what it may mean next.

HARLOW: Also ahead, President Trump unloading, calling Democrats vicious, horrible people. Will that help him win over moderates ahead of the 2020 race?

SCIUTTO: Echoes of deplorables from 2016.

And the secretary of state and treasury secretary set to speak in a few moments. We're going to keep an eye on what they have to say regarding Iran in particular.

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HARLOW: Well, just in to CNN, really disturbing, stunning new video. It shows the moment that Ukrainian plane crashed in Southwest Tehran just after taking off. Before we play this, we want to warn you it's difficult to watch.

SCIUTTO: Listen, we have watched it a couple times here. This is from a security camera. And you could see this is just around the moment the sky lights up there, a flash of light, and then watch this as you just see debris, burning debris raining down there. Not clear if that debris itself is from the plane or from a building, structures in the area that were hit by parts of the plane. But it does come at the time that the plane was hit. An eyewitness says that large pieces of debris have already been removed from the larger crash site. Of course, this happening before investigators have had a chance to get to the scene and keeping that scene pristine essential to any credible investigation.

Let's go to CNN Senior International Correspondent Fred Pleitgen. He is in Tehran. And it has been interesting, Fred, to watch how the Iranian government has responded to this as intelligence agencies say this was an Iranian missile. On the one hand, they're saying, no, on the other hand, they are open to international investigators coming in, including from the U.S.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, international investigators, Jim, coming in, and also information from international entities as well, including from the U.S. and from Canada. It was quite interesting that earlier today, there was a press conference by the head of the Civil Aviation Authority of Iran where he once again dismissed the theory that, as he said, that the plane had been hit or may have been hit by a missile.

He didn't consider that to be valid for various reasons. Also he said because the debris on the ground was -- would have been strewn, he says, across a larger area if that plane would have been destroyed midair by a missile.

However, he also said in that that he heard the information coming from the U.S. and from Canada, the intelligence services there, he said if they have any information, they should give it to the investigation, which, of course, right now is very much getting underway here in Iran. But you guys just showed that devastating video of that impact taking place.

And, you know, one of the things that we heard now is that the impact was so hard, that the black boxes, at least one of them, was damaged. As some new information that I got -- just got from a source very close to the investigation saying that of those two black boxes, it appears to be the flight data recorder that was damaged, not the cockpit voice recorder. The Iranians are saying they're trying to get the data of both the black boxes.

Today, they want to see if they can do that. They're not sure if they have the technical capabilities to get it off a damaged black box or flight data recorder. They say they might have to ask outside entities, as they put it, for help, which would include the French and the Canadians, maybe even the Russians as well.

And you guys were talking there also about the debris field. The Iranians confirming to us that they have taken most of the debris off that field and are putting it in a hangar. They say they want forensic workers to try and put as much of the plane together again as they can to then try to work out what exactly happened, guys.

SCIUTTO: Well, Russian help would be interesting because, of course, Russian missiles shot down MH17. And the Russians were not credible partners in that investigation, denying what were the cold hard facts. Fred Pleitgen in Iran, thank, very much.

CNN's Paula Newton, she joins us now from Toronto. We should note this, of those 176 victims on this plane, 63 of them from Canada, and their families just reeling now from this.

PAULA NEWTON, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Yes, reeling is really the way you put it. And you see the memorial behind me. I'm here in Toronto. Think about it, really replicated coast to coast, so many people touched by this devastating stories they've heard from so many families who know their life will never be the same again.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NEWTON: It is the smiles that are so searing, indelible reminder of all that's been lost. At this vigil in Toronto, friends, families, strangers, tried to take in the magnitude of the tragedy.

ROSIE: Words cannot express the sorrow and the pain that the family are going through. It's just unbelievable.

[10:25:00]

NEWTON: Rosie (ph), who did not want her last name used, could not believe her family friend, Mohammed Iliyasi (ph) was married in Iran just last week and then boarded flight 752.

For many here, the grief is still so raw. And then they learn the airliner may have been shot out of the sky by Iran. They can't make sense of it.

ROSIE: How are they going to respond to the parents of the children of the loss of the sons, daughters, husbands, wives? It's -- this is so surreal.

NEWTON: At least 63 Canadians died, but the vast majority of the passengers, 138, were connecting to Canada, many returning to lives here.

Vigils like this are going on right across the country. So many Canadians can really relate to the stories of these victims, people really living their dreams, trying to make a better life in a second home.

Many of them called Edmonton home and there they mourned students, academics, doctors, people whose life stories as new Canadians resonated with so many.

Hamed Esmaeilion says he still can't believe his wife, Pareesa (ph), and his daughter, Rera (ph), are never coming home to him.

HAMED ESMAEILION, LOST WIFE AND DAUGHTER IN PLANE CRASH: So I usually called her when she's absent (ph), usually she is not. And I told them that, okay, Rera (ph) will be absent forever. So that was a hard moment for me.

NEWTON: Ardy Gharagozli is heartbroken, losing Benaz Ibrahimi (ph) and her son, Ramtin (ph), but he's also angry with the politics now intruding on his grief.

ARDY GHARAGOZLI, LOST FRIENDS IN PLANE CRASH: But even if it's Iran, the blame is on USA. If President Trump wouldn't have ordered the drone strike on Qasem Soleimani, all of this wouldn't have happened. We wouldn't be here today grieving.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NEWTON: Jim, Poppy, I know it's been a controversial topic. We've discussed it on our air. But that anger is here. On the other hand, others are saying, look, they need answers Iran. So many of those people on that airplane were not just Canadian, they were also Iranian. And if this is true, Iran is responsible for killing its own citizens as well. Jim, Poppy?

HARLOW: Paula, just those children, thank you for honoring the victims in that way. We'll be right back.

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