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DOJ To Reveal Results Of Probe Into Shooting That Killed Three Sailors; Trump Officials Struggle To Defend Claims Of Embassy Plot; 2020 Race Heats Up. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired January 13, 2020 - 14:00   ET

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

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And that is it for me. NEWSROOM with Brooke Baldwin starts right now.

[14:00:14]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: Brianna, thank you. Hi there. I'm Brooke Baldwin. You're watching CNN. Good to be with you. We are standing by and waiting to hear from Attorney General Bill Barr and FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich. They're expected to announce that last month's deadly shooting at that Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, was in fact an act of terrorism.

A Saudi Air Force Second Lieutenant killed three American sailors in that December shooting spree, and so CNN has now learned from multiple sources that more than a dozen Saudi servicemen training at U.S. military installations will be expelled from the United States following review of that tragedy and further vetting of foreign students.

So let's start there with CNN Justice Correspondent, Jessica Schneider and Jessica, terrorism, right. So we're going to hear much more about that. Tell me some of the details. Give us a preview.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Brooke. This is really the first time that we'll hear directly from the Attorney General about that deadly attack in Pensacola last month at the Naval Air Station. It was by that Saudi national who was training with the U.S. military.

Now that Saudi national was actually killed in the incident, but we do expect that Attorney General Barr in just minutes here will announce that not only was this an act of terrorism, something the FBI has been investigating, but also that more than a dozen Saudi servicemen who have been training at U.S. military installations, they are now expected to be expelled from this country.

Now, these servicemen we understand have been found to have connections to extremist movements. Some are also accused of possessing child pornography. So the announcement expected to be twofold here, Brooke, and of course, the attack in Pensacola back on December 6th that really did send shockwaves through the Pentagon and as a result, it suspended all training for the nearly 900 Saudi students who are in this country. And the Pentagon also ordered a full review for the about 5,000

international military personnel who do train alongside the American military.

So this is something that happens in pretty wide scope. You know, since then the Pentagon, it has announced it will implement enhanced vetting and screening.

But you know, it is clear that there is still more of an investigation to do and that's also something, Brooke that we expect to hear from the Attorney General here in just minutes.

We expect A.G. Barr to really press the tech company, Apple for help accessing two iPhones that belonged to the Pensacola gunman. We reported recently that the FBI has sent a letter to Apple requesting its assistance to bypass the passcodes on two of those phones. Apple responded saying it's been assisting the FBI, but this is something that Attorney General Barr has repeatedly spoken out about, on how tech companies really need to do more to help law enforcement and work through these encryption issues.

So we're expecting a lot from this press conference, Brooke happening in just minutes announcing that it was in fact an act of terrorism; that about a dozen or so Saudi nationals will be expelled as part of these military training program, and then also looking at these encryption issues that continue to plague law enforcement when they investigate something like this.

BALDWIN: We'll listen, for all of that coming up. Jessica, thank you. Keep an eye on that for us. Meantime, so far today in Iran, a pause in the escalating violence after two days of clashes and demonstrations with protesters accusing police of firing into crowds.

[VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]

BALDWIN: Authorities say only teargas was used. Iranians are outraged after Iran admitted the "human error" by one of its military operators, downed an airliner killing all 176 people on board. Some even chanted "Death to the Supreme Leader" and the opposition's stance in stark contrast to the thousands of Iranians who rallied in solidarity after the targeted killing of Iran's top General Qasem Soleimani by the United States.

And it seems the more time goes by, the more confusion there really is about what led President Trump to authorize the drone strike that killed Soleimani.

Initially, President Trump said it was imminent threats against diplomats and military personnel. Recently, President Trump revealed Soleimani responsible for hundreds of American deaths was targeting four U.S. embassies and throughout, Trump's top diplomatic and Intelligence officials have struggled with the specifics on what the President is pushing.

I want you to listen to what Defense Secretary Mark Esper said just over this weekend, regarding those four embassies. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK ESPER, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: Well, the President didn't say that there was a tangible -- he didn't cite a specific piece of evidence. What he said is he probably -- he believed --

QUESTION: Are you saying there wasn't one?

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

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Later, Secretary Esper assumingly changed his story to CNN.

[14:05:01]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ESPER: What the President said with regard to the four embassies is what I believe as well, and he said he believed that they probably -- that they could have been targeting the embassies in the region. I believe that as well as the other National Security team members.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: CNN's Jeremy Diamond and Michael Warren are with me now, and so Jeremy, first to you what is the President's mindset today on all of this?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, first, I think we have to keep in mind that this is the President who really helped muddle the message further coming out of this administration.

When he claimed last week that there were four embassies that were under imminent, threat that was after he was asked a question about what exactly the Intelligence was that led him to this decision to target Qasem Soleimani, that Iranian general.

And then we saw yesterday, top administration officials: Secretary Esper and the National Security adviser, Robert O'Brien really contorting themselves to try and stick within the lane of what the Intelligence actually said without actually publicly directly contradicting the President.

But we are hearing from the President once again, and it is on this question of an imminent threat. Let me read you his tweet from just moments ago where he said, "The fake news media and their Democratic partners are working hard to determine whether or not the future attack by terrorist, Soleimani, was imminent or not. And was my team in agreement. The answer to both is a strong, yes. But it doesn't really matter because of his horrible past."

Now, that last part there, where the President is saying that this notion of imminence doesn't really matter was echoed by his White House Press Secretary on Fox News just a little bit ago, where she said that it is simply a question of semantics. Now, of course, this is much more than just semantics, because this is

the legal justification that the administration used to actually carry out this targeted killing of Soleimani without congressional authorization, without first consulting with Congress.

So again, not just a question of transparency, or better understanding why the President took this action, it is actually a matter of the legal justification and the President here, probably making the job for the administration's lawyers that much harder -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: What about the military brass? Michael, to you. Well, what have Trump's generals been doing behind the scenes?

MICHAEL WARREN, CNN REPORTER: Well, Brooke, on the military side of the equation, you have Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley, who is really the President's top military adviser and he is doing in private what he has been doing with reporters and in the public, which is defending the Intelligence that this attack was based on.

But again, as you and Jeremy have noted, it's been the confusion of that message, and it has really come from the President that has made this very difficult for the military brass as well to try to keep up with where the President is on this Intelligence. And it's been a continuing problem and a growing problem for somebody like General Milley, who is, of course in apolitical military adviser to the President.

BALDWIN: Michael and Jeremy, thank you very much. I want to pivot and get to some breaking news that's just coming into us in the case of those two gunmen who opened fire in Jersey City, New Jersey last month. We're learning more about the explosives they had, so let me bring in CNN National Correspondent, Brynn Gingras. What do you know?

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we're getting an update from the FBI news conference one month after this attack happened and those explosives, what you're describing, we're hearing from them is that they had enough explosives in the U-Haul that was found at that scene to do enough damage, five football fields long, just with one explosive device.

We're also learning that they had even more explosives that they could have made actually another bomb, so it gives you a kind of an idea of the scope of how serious of an incident this was, how much damage really could have caused. Of course, we already know that four people were killed in that incident in that Jersey City kosher market on December 10th.

A little bit more about their motivations, officials are saying that they did have anti-Semitic motivations as well as a hatred toward law enforcement. And interestingly enough, we knew that those two killed a police officer, Jersey City police officer, Detective Joseph Seals, on the way before doing this attack.

We're hearing that, if that hadn't happened, they may have possibly done a different attack on a different day. That killing actually might have thwarted some sort of plans that these two were carrying out because they were doing research not only on that kosher market, but also at a Jewish Community Center that they owned.

So it's really interesting coming out of this investigation again a month after this attack happened, but some serious, serious explosives in that U-Haul that we're learning they were living in for quite some time.

BALDWIN: Five football fields. Wow. Brynn, thank you for the update there.

I want to go back to the Department of Justice announcement on the results of the investigation into the attack of that Pensacola Naval Base. So listen now to Attorney General Bill Barr.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BARR, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: On December 6th, Second Lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a member of the Royal Saudi Air Force, entered a building on grounds of the Pensacola Naval Air Station and killed three U.S. sailors and severely wounded eight other Americans. He was killed during the attack. This was an act of terrorism.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Joining me now to discuss what we've just heard from Attorney General Bill Barr is Josh Campbell, CNN correspondent and former FBI counterterrorism agent. So you know, he said much more than that. What's your read? I mean, they are saying, terrorism. Full stop.

[14:10:11]

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. And we've been waiting for that designation from Federal officials, whether they would go that far as to label this an act of terrorism. The Attorney General just now mentioning a couple of key points based on this investigation, describing the suspect as motivated by a jihadi ideology.

He talked a little bit about what transpired before the attack. During the course of this FBI investigation, they found a number of different messages that were posted online by the suspect, anti-U.S., anti- Israeli, promoting again, his radical ideology.

And in the days before the attack, the suspect actually posting a message saying, "The countdown has begun." And even more chilling, the Attorney General just now telling us that in the days before the attack, the suspect actually visited the 9/11 Memorial in New York City before this attack actually occurred.

Now, there's one additional piece of information that is notable. The Attorney General really clarifying some of the earlier reports about this notion that there were other Saudi students that were videotaping the attack, which obviously raised questions about whether this was a conspiracy. The Attorney General telling us that they do not believe any of the

other students were involved, providing some clarification, saying that the actual videotaping by those who were in the vicinity of the shooting occurred after the attack, recording the commotion, the first responders and the like, and they do not believe any of those other Saudi students were actually involved or were part of this, you know, obviously, radical ideology.

We're waiting for additional information. We had been reporting over the weekend, our colleagues David Shortell and Evan Perez, about a number of these Saudi students being expelled from the country back to Saudi Arabia for a number of different reasons.

We'll continue to report that out about what the Justice Department is doing and where the investigation goes from here -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Right. Jessica was just reporting on those and its connections to extremist movements, child porn in some cases, and that obviously sending just shockwave through the Pentagon and will lead to even more vetting moving forward. Josh, thank you very much.

CAMPBELL: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: We've got some breaking news this afternoon from the campaign trail, what we've learned about comments allegedly made to Senator Elizabeth Warren by her colleague, Senator Bernie Sanders about whether or not he believes a woman could actually become President. Could Senator Sanders' alleged words come back to haunt him?

And President Trump changes his mind about how he would like the Senate to handle his impeachment.

And we'll talk to a woman who felt relief when she heard about the killing of General Soleimani. We will talk to the widow of a U.S. soldier.

You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:17:01]

BALDWIN: We're back. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

The 2020 race is starting to heat up with what appears to be a surprising new feud between old friends. Senator Elizabeth Warren is blasting Senator Bernie Sanders and his campaign for reportedly instructing volunteers to trash her as a candidate that only cares about the elite.

And now we're getting new reporting about a private conversation between the two in which Sanders apparently told Warren that he didn't believe a woman could win the nomination.

CNN's Correspondent, M.J. Lee is with me now. And so M.J., let's just start with, you know, the woman piece of this and that all apparently happened at what they're referring to this nonaggression pact, this meeting between these two at Senator Warren's apartment in Washington in December of 2018. Tell us exactly what was said.

M.J. LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. You know, this is a meeting that would have taken place when both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were considering and thinking about launching their 2020 campaigns and what we are told and what we have learned is that in this private meeting, the two of them discussed, among other things, this agreement to be civil and to not attack one another should they run against each other in 2020, because they both believe that this was important for the progressive movement.

We also learned that they talked about ways of beating Donald Trump and that Senator Warren, at one point said to Senator Sanders that she believes she would be a strong candidate for two main reasons. One, that she could launch a robust campaign built around the economy; and also, that she believes she could get broad support from female voters across the country.

Four sources tell CNN that Sanders responded in part by saying that he did not believe a woman could win. Now, we also learned that Sanders in that meeting expressed some frustration about sort of what he saw as a growing focus on identity politics in the Democratic Party and also that Senator Warren disagreed with Senator Sanders at the time about his assessment that a woman could not win.

Now, the Warren campaign declined to comment for this story. But Bernie Sanders himself has given CNN a lengthy statement pushing back on the characterization. So I just want to read that statement in full.

He said that "It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting, where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for President, I would tell her that a woman couldn't win. It's sad that three weeks before the Iowa caucus, and a year after that private conversation, staff who weren't in the room or lying about what happened."

"What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could. Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course. After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by three million votes in 2016."

So this is an aggressive push back again, on the record from Senator Sanders himself and in that statement, again worth noting that he is now accusing the Warren campaign of lying. So a major escalation here -- Brooke.

[14:20:10]

BALDWIN: Wow. M.J., thank you for the reporting. We'll discuss so much of what you're reporting out with some analyst, and these two will certainly be two to watch at the last debate.

I want to remind everyone to tune in. This is the last debate before the first vote in Iowa. The live CNN Presidential Debate in partnership with the Des Moines Register tomorrow night at nine o'clock right here on CNN.

We have more news from the campaign trail today. Senator Cory Booker dropping out of the race. Hear which candidate may benefit from that the most.

And President Trump was initially wanting a big show at his Senate impeachment trial, but now apparently he is turning against it. Why the 180?

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[14:25:28]

BALDWIN: Nearly a month after the House impeached President Trump, his Senate trial could soon get underway. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to turn over the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate in the coming days.

Just last week, President Trump supported a public trial, even the idea of calling House Democratic leaders to testify, but today, he is singing a different tune and is calling on Congress to dismiss the case against him.

Gloria Borger is CNN's chief political analyst and Gloria, why the 180 for President Trump? I thought he wanted some big show.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, this wouldn't be the first time the President did a 180, I don't think, but I think he realized that while he may have thought he wanted a big show, then he realized it's going to be a big show, and that could be a real problem for him.

And that there's a real possibility that there are going to be witnesses and doesn't look at all like a possibility, like it would be dismissed. And so I think what he's trying to do is say, you know, this is a witch hunt, this is a hoax, and I shouldn't be put through this.

BALDWIN: He was also tweeting about the stigma.

BORGER: Yes.

BALDWIN: The stigma that impeachment would leave him with and yesterday, Speaker Pelosi gave this rare interview and she kept repeating this line.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): We have confidence in our case that it is impeachable, and this President is impeached for life. We feel very proud of the courage of our members to vote to impeach the President.

There's nothing the Senate can do that can ever erase that.

We will have an election if we don't have him removed sooner, but again, he will be impeached forever. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Impeached forever -- is that the new rallying cry for the Democrats? Because that might have gotten under the President's skin just a little bit.

BORGER: No one knows how to do that like Nancy Pelosi. And if you want to put it in entertainment terms, when the credits roll on Donald Trump impeached, will be at the very top or near the very top.

And I think she had a way of putting that that really gets through to him, and I think he heard that and had a little bit of a meltdown about it.

BALDWIN: What about witnesses? Because Speaker Pelosi said that the Senate will "pay the price" for not calling witnesses, but when you look at polling it shows impeachment isn't resonating with voters. Is she wrong about that?

BORGER: Right. Impeachment isn't resonating with voters. I think the Democrats are well aware of that. I think what they're trying to do is create some trouble for Republicans by having votes in the Senate on witnesses, particularly for those Republicans that are up for reelection, more moderate Republicans.

We know that Susan Collins of Maine who is up for reelection is talking to other Republicans about the potential for witnesses. All you need is for Republicans to go along with that.

And I think that what the Democrats are going to say, if Republicans don't want witnesses, they are participating in a cover up, because everybody now knows that former National Security adviser, John Bolton has said, if you subpoena me, I will come. So he is willing to do it.

So I think that this is their new battle cry, and you will hear that over and over again. And I wouldn't be surprised if Chuck Schumer insists on vote after vote after vote or tries to have multiple votes to pin those moderates down because his goal is to get control of the Senate.

BALDWIN: Well, as you and I have been talking, a little piece of news just came in. The White House wants -- the White House wants the Senate trial rules to include the ability to dismiss the charges against the President.

We're told the White House is now urging Senate Republicans to do so and would speed up the trial. Your reaction to that?

BORGER: I don't think there are 51 Republicans to do it. I don't think you've got 50 -- I don't think he's got 51 votes. So it would be a majority vote. And I think one of the reasons Mitch McConnell has been so sort of cagey about this is that he knows how to count votes better than anybody else.

And those moderates that we have been talking about, like Susan Collins talking about witnesses are probably not willing to go along with immediate dismissal.

We've already heard Mitt Romney say, for example, that he'd like to hear what John Bolton has to say. He wouldn't commit to calling witnesses, but he'd like to hear from John Bolton.

So I think the President would no doubt like to have this dismissed. I think he's not going to be able to do that.

BALDWIN: Gloria Borger, good to have you on. Good to see you.

BORGER: Good to see you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Thank you.

BORGER: Yes.

[14:30:10]