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Pelosi Gears Up to Hand Over Articles of Impeachment; British Royal Family Holds Summit to Discuss Prince Harry and Meghan; White House Faces Storm Over Iran Intelligence as Impeachment Trial Looms; Trump Admin Struggles to Defend Claim of Plot Against Embassies. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired January 13, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:02]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Very good Monday morning to you. It's going to be quite a week. I'm Jim Sciutto in Washington.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, it will be. I'm Poppy Harlow in New York. We're glad you're here. We're following two major stories this morning.

Nancy Pelosi making her move after weeks of mounting pressure. The House speaker preparing to hand over those articles of impeachment to the Senate. But then what happens? Majority leader Mitch McConnell supports voting to dismiss this all together. Pelosi has a name for that, a cover-up.

SCIUTTO: Also this morning, the White House is facing a growing credibility crisis, this time over the president's claims of exactly what intelligence led to his decision to kill Iran's top general. The president says that Iran targeted four U.S. embassies in the region prior to that killing but top White House officials are struggling now to back that up with any specific evidence or intelligence. In fact, some have acknowledged there was no specific intelligence to that effect.

Let's begin, though, with the impeachment articles. CNN's Athena Jones, she is live on Capitol Hill.

So, Athena, tell us what happens now. Some votes, some meetings, some caucuses. How soon are these articles likely to be transmitted to the Senate?

ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Jim. That should become clear once House Speaker Nancy Pelosi meets with the rest of her caucus. That is scheduled for tomorrow morning. And they'll be discussing that and we'll get a clearer idea of when this will all play out. The thinking right now is midweek. Perhaps as early as Tuesday night or Wednesday.

For one thing the House has to vote on the impeachment managers. Those are the members who will be prosecuting the case against the president in the Senate. But of course we all know it's been nearly a month since the House voted to impeach the president. And so this is a fateful period we're entering. And we're almost at the next step.

Speaker Pelosi talked about her concerns about that next step, the concerns she has over the signal that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is sending by supporting a resolution introduced by Missouri Senator Josh Hawley that would dismiss the articles of impeachment because Pelosi hasn't yet sent them. Listen what she said on ABC's "This Week."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): He signed on, on Thursday, to a resolution to dismiss the case. To dismiss -- dismissing is a cover-up. Dismissing is a cover-up. If they want to go that route, again, the senators who are thinking now about voting for it, witnesses or not, they will have to be accountable for not having a fair trial.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JONES: Now, I should be clear that Republicans don't have the votes to dismiss the articles outright, but here you have Speaker Pelosi just making it very clear, as she's been doing it for the last few weeks, she wants to see a real trial and a fair trial. So the timing is still TBD. But there's no bones about it, this is going to be a big week here on Capitol Hill -- Jim.

HARLOW: Big one, for sure. Athena, thanks very much for being there.

Let's talk more about all of this. CNN political analyst Elaina Plott is with us.

Good morning.

ELAINA PLOTT, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Hi.

HARLOW: So of course the fight now is over witnesses. Are you going to agree to call witnesses, and you're going to make that agreement before the trial starts or are you going to wait, sort of Clintonesque and do it in the middle and have that vote? What was notable I think is what Senator Schumer said in this new interview to Politico, he said, support for obtaining new documents in the trial and obviously witnesses is, quote, "even stronger than we thought with a large number of Republicans supporting it."

He is betting that the political calculation for those vulnerable Republicans in the Senate is going to be enough for them to vote yes if it gets to that point. Susan Collins is saying, no way, let's come to an agreement, so we don't have to take that tough vote. What do you see happening?

PLOTT: I was just in Denver, Poppy. I'm doing a story on Cory Gardner's re-election campaign. He, of course, is one of the most vulnerable senators in the conference right now. And I spoke to a lot of Republicans, these suburban women, these unaffiliated but leaning moderate Republican voters who are watching senators like Cory Gardner closely as they make this decision. And I think if you see these senators say outright that they are not at all open to new documents, new witnesses, new testimonies at all, that's really going to affect them at the ballot box in November.

And I think there's a reason, too, that even Senator John Cornyn from Texas, of all places, has said that he is open to having somebody like John Bolton testify. I don't think you have a lot of wiggle room among a lot of Republicans right now to block all of this outright.

SCIUTTO: Open to, though, is different from actually voting for it, right? And those Republicans even in difficult states define Mitch McConnell as no easy thing. I mean, do you see -- hate to be cynical here, but do you see a setup for something. Well, I was open to it, but then I listened to the arguments. There's not a lot there. I don't really think we need it at this stage. It's time to move onto other issues."

PLOTT: Jim, you know as well as I do that so much about these senators in the run-up to November is about getting the appropriate sound bite. So if they can be on the record saying that they want all the evidence, they want everything out there, but it was with that consideration that they voted against with Mitch McConnell. Ultimately that might, you know, for their campaigns seem like good enough at the time.

[09:05:05]

SCIUTTO: Yes. Yes.

HARLOW: Talk to us about in terms of what actually Nancy Pelosi got from this. Because whenever she does transfer the articles, I think it's a safe bet that she and other Democrats will say this was worth the wait. But they also face the reality that they kept saying how urgent this was and then they held for, you know, almost a month now. Was it worth it politically for Democrats?

PLOTT: Poppy, I think that really is the salient point with regard to all of this, and one of the reasons that even privately Democrats were criticizing her from the get go, it's very tough to go from saying this man is sort of a threat to the very fabric of the Constitution to saying let's not rush this immediately. Let's wait and see what happens.

I think the other point, too, and one of the reasons that representatives in the Democratic caucus that I've spoken to are frustrated, is you have to remember, when you had House Republicans, you know, the managers seeking to prosecute the case against Clinton in the Senate, they had almost two weeks to prepare.

At this point, you know, and as Athena was saying, if we get these articles into the Senate in the next few days, the trial starts this week, the House managers, we don't even know yet at this point, are going to have maybe less than 24 hours to prepare their cases. It's not a great place to be in.

HARLOW: Elaina Plott, thank you very much.

Again a consequential week ahead, all of this on top of what's going on internationally. Overnight anti-government protesters and Iranian Security Forces clashing in the streets of Tehran. Look at this.

Here you can see protesters running away as tear gas fills the air. Witnesses on the streets reporting that riot police are using live ammunition to try to disperse the crowds -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Listen, we're not that removed from a few months ago where anti-government protests led to the deaths of hundreds of Iranians.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: And there's this new disturbing video into CNN. These are wounded protesters being carried away, some panicked Iranians seem to run for their lives from security forces there.

Anger is growing after the Iranian government admitted it shot down -- it says unintentionally, by mistake -- a passenger plane, shot it down with a missile, killing 176 people, more than half of them Iranian citizens. Some protesters destroyed pictures of recently killed General Soleimani.

Let's get to CNN's Nic Robertson, he's live in Abu Dhabi, not far from Iran.

This is a tough moment for this government here. It had wanted to point the finger at the U.S. for raising tensions in the region after the killing Soleimani, but now it's on defense here, having to defend, explain a decision that left 176 civilians dead.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: And they are trying to explain it. The commander-in-chief of the military forces tried to explain it by saying that they were sorry and it was a mistake. And that he said this in the past 24 hours that this was the saddest day of his life, that he wished he'd been on that plane. But, you know, this contrition that's coming from the military leaders and political leaders in Iran isn't translating to the streets.

What we're seeing on the streets is the protesters coming out angry that the government didn't ground the civilian airlines, airliners the night they fired retaliation missiles at the United States bases in Iraq, angry because they feel that the regime doesn't respect the citizens of the country. They would rather conduct wars elsewhere than look after their own people.

And what's been happening, and we're seeing it in these videos, people are being shot on the streets. The police in Iran are saying we're not shooting live rounds, we're shooting tear gas but we see the injuries, we can hear in the videos, people saying they are shooting at us. Get down, get down. The woman saying she's shot in the foot. Another man says, oh, my gosh, she's been hit, she's been hit, bring bandages.

It sounds chaotic, and so the violence has been escalating over the last few nights and the protesters protests have been expanding across the country. So while leaders are offering contrition and sorrow, the reality is that they appear to be trying to crush these protests in the same way they crushed those protests last year.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Nic, thank you very much for your reporting.

The White House struggling to explain the intelligence that they insist led to the immediate need to take out Iranian general Soleimani. The president says he believes that Soleimani was targeting four U.S. embassies.

SCIUTTO: The top administration officials have declined to cite any specific evidence to back that claim up. Some have acknowledged there really wasn't such specific intelligence. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK ESPER, DEFENSE SECRETARY: He said he believed that they probably that they could have been targeting the embassies in the region. He didn't cite a specific piece of evidence. What he says he probably he believed --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you saying there wasn't one?

ESPER: I didn't see one with regard to four embassies.

ROBERT O'BRIEN, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: We had exquisite intelligence. And the intelligence showed that they were looking at U.S. facilities throughout the region and that they wanted to inflict casualties on American soldiers, sailors and the Marines as well as diplomats. The threat was imminent. I saw the intelligence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Probably could have, though, does not amount to exquisite.

Let's discuss with Major General Spider Marks, retired U.S. Army and CNN military analyst.

Listen, you have experience. You served in Iraq at the height of the war there. When a president and his most senior advisers say that there was exquisite intelligence about an imminent attack, but then when they attempt to back that up and frankly acknowledge, you saw Esper saying, well, probably could have, that's different, isn't it?

MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, it's significant. On a very personal level, I've got to tell you, as we are going to war in '03, mobilizing in '02 the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, in my particular case, since I was the senior intelligence guy, was troubling. We had to try to connect dots. We had to try to gather some additional intelligence.

I thought there were gaps in terms of what was being said about WMD and its imminence. That term was used then as well. And so you fast forward and see what's going on today, yes, there is some challenges with that. And I think the administration frankly is tying itself in knots with this. And they did that when they used the imminent description to begin with, which I think was unnecessary based on the AUMF. Didn't have to do that. Soleimani was a high value target, he was the head of a terrorist

organization, who had been legally described, could have gone after him at any time, and they took this opportunity. So the imminent term was, in my mind, was a justification looking for a standard, you know, a solution looking for a problem. Didn't have to be done.

HARLOW: When it comes to the overall impact, we heard in the minutes after and the days following from the president, from the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, that the world is a safer place now and Americans are safer. But we have the first set of polling in about how Americans really feel, and they don't feel like that. This is new ABC-Ipsos polling and it shows 52 percent of Americans say they feel less safe now that Soleimani has been taken out. Only 25 percent feel more safe. What does that indicate to you?

MARKS: Well, again, when we have this -- when we have discussions about U.S. safety, specifically vis-a-vis Iran, I think it's a relative descriptor to say we're safer or we're not safer. And that again is not a standard. Our relationship with Iran has been -- could be described as 40 years, essentially violent, essentially non- existent or at least isolationist in terms of how we engage.

Our only means of engagement have been to apply economic pressure and to engage, when necessary, militarily. But that's not a relationship you want to have. So we have a relationship with Iran, which has never been safe. So to say we're less safe now than they were yesterday, again, I don't think is a relevant descriptor.

SCIUTTO: General Marks, one reason the intelligence matters here, and a proper and fulsome description of it matters, right, is that there have been cases in the past, 2003, they were on to the Iraq war, coloring the intelligence, perhaps exaggerating intelligence, which led to consequential decisions here.

This is key, is it not, in the Soleimani killing? Because yes, he was a bad guy and on their high-value target list, but the reporting shows that the president was presented with a whole range of options. In the past he'd backed off more serious military action against Iran. But in this case took the most aggressive stance here because it gets to decision making, does it not? Then why now? Why did the president choose to take this risk now? Isn't that something that the American people need to have explained to them honestly?

MARKS: Of course. Absolutely. What can be released in terms of, you know, releasable intelligence without putting anybody else at risk or future operations the United States is conducting in that region at risk. There should be a full accounting for what occurred. The point is, I can't get into the president's head in terms of why he chose now.

But based on the sequence of events that had occurred with the drone shooting, the attack against Saudi Aramco, routine efforts to try to dislodge U.S. presence and to go after U.S. presence and to directly attack U.S. presence as a region, the president said clearly said that's enough. I can't characterize that as being vitriolic or more emotional than it was objective but I can tell you the president made a clear decision based on the evidence that he had and it was an opportunity that presented itself with good intelligence.

I'm not describing imminent discussion but I'm talking about, you know, the stack of intelligence, all manner of intelligence sources that said this is a good shot, Mr. President, this is one of our legitimate recommendations.

[09:15:00]

He chose that option.

HARLOW: Major General Spider Marks, thank you for being with us.

MARKS: Sure, thanks, folks.

HARLOW: Still to come, with the articles of impeachment expected, probably to be delivered to the Senate sometime next week. Who knows, though? We will speak with a Democratic senator about to become a juror in this trial. Also this --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I was disappointed to hear that Bernie is sending his volunteers out to trash me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: A debate preview, Elizabeth Warren calling out Bernie Sanders over a leaked script from his campaign.

SCIUTTO: And this morning, the British crown in crisis. The queen meeting with Prince Charles, William and Harry after Harry and Meghan say they want to step back from their roles, their public roles as royals.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:20:00]

HARLOW: Welcome back. As the White House struggles to explain Intel on what they say were, quote, "imminent attacks from Iran." We do know this is imminent. A Senate impeachment trial here to talk about both Democratic Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, he is a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee. Senator, so nice to have you.

SEN. BEN CARDIN (D-MD): It's good to be with you, Poppy.

HARLOW: You say, quote, "a fair trial requires that we hear from key witnesses." Do you think Speaker Pelosi should transmit the articles of impeachment at all to the Senate without a guarantee of witnesses.

CARDIN: I think she's indicated that she's going to transmit it this week, and I think that's the right decision since the articles were voted on in the House, more information could become available, particularly from those witnesses and documents that were not made available to the house because of the president not making them available.

I think the point that's been made -- or during these couple of weeks is that it's critically important for the Senate to conduct a fair trial, and a fair trial includes hearing the witnesses who have direct knowledge of the president's participation with the president of Ukraine and the cover-up potential obstruction of justice with Congress. And that those witnesses need to testify in the Senate.

HARLOW: Nothing is stopping House Democrats from sort of reopening this thing and subpoenaing John Bolton now, that he said that he would talk, right? That's a change from when they were leaving their investigation. Are your colleagues in the house making a mistake by not doing that, and by saying, this is on the Senate now?

CARDIN: Well, impeachment is a constitutional process. The house has already acted on the articles of impeachment. It's now up to the United States Senate to conduct the trial. So, I think the focus needs to be on the United States Senate on a fair trial. I think that needs to be the focus and the Senate can hear from those direct -- those witnesses that had the direct knowledge and review of the documents.

There's always the possibility that the house could proceed further with its investigation, but I think right now, the proper way is to go in the Senate and allow those witnesses to testify and the documents to be produced.

HARLOW: Let's see if they are, let's see if you hear from witnesses if you get documents. Let's move on to Iran because Fort Meade, of course is in your state, and it is -- those service members, they were the ones who warned U.S. troops overseas that these Iranian missiles were headed towards those Iraqi bases. The president said over the weekend that Soleimani was planning to attack -- you know, leading an attack on four U.S. embassies. Listen to how Defense Secretary Mark Esper tried to explain that yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK ESPER, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, UNITED STATES: What the president said with regard to the four embassies is what I believe as well. And he said that he believed that they probably -- that they could have been targeting the embassies in the region. I believe that as well as did other National Security team members.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: You were briefed. Were you shown any intelligence that led you to that belief as well about four embassies?

CARDIN: No, not at all. There's no mention of any information on specific embassies or the number of embassies that were in threat. Let's be clear, there is no authorization for the use of military force approved by Congress that the president can use to go against Iran. The president justified this upon an imminent threat against the United States, and he has not produced the specific information that would -- that could qualify as an imminent threat. HARLOW: OK, so given that, some of your fellow Democrats in Congress

are taking it one step further. And they believe -- or they're very worried about it, at least, the administration misleading the American people. Listen to what Senator Chris Van Hollen told me last night and what Congressman Gerry Connolly told Ana Cabrera.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD): I do believe that there are lots of folks in this administration who are working to manipulate the intelligence.

REP. GERRY CONNOLLY (D-VA): Or do I believe he might make it up to try to justify after the fact an impulsive action that has led to lots of ramifications, and could yet --

(CLEARS THROAT)

Excuse me, lead to more? Yes, of course he could.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Manipulate the intelligence possibly, make it up possibly. I mean, those are pretty strong assertions. Do you share their concerns? Do you think that or is that going too far at this point?

CARDIN: When you look at the Trump administration, so many times the president has made statements which the intelligence community just cannot support. I think it's clear right now that there was not specific information about an attack, and there was a little justification for an imminent threat. Yet, the president characterized it as such.

[09:25:00]

And now his intelligence community is trying to justify what the president said, you can't. The president uses his own language, uses his own set of facts that he has many times just didn't believe what the intelligence community told him. We know that with Russia's interference in our election. The president was the last person probably on the face of the earth that accepted that Russia was responsible for that.

So, yes, there's been numerous examples where the president has acted contrary to what the Intelligence community has told them.

HARLOW: Senator Ben Cardin, I know it's a big week, we appreciate your time, especially this morning. Thank you.

SCIUTTO: And he's going to be sitting as a juror soon.

HARLOW: Yes --

SCIUTTO: Are the gloves off? New signs the most progressive candidates on the stage tomorrow night will not be playing nice with each other. Will you see conflict on the stage? We'll bring you more. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:30:00]