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Trump's Purge Of Officials Make Way For Loyalists; Stakes Higher For Nevada Caucus Set For Tomorrow. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired February 21, 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 just for context here, since the 19- year war began, the Defense Department has reported 2,309 military casualties in Afghanistan.

And right now, many of the men and women who are serving there in the branches were just babies when 9/11 happened, and in Afghanistan, there were an average of nine children killed or hurt every single day in the first nine months of last year.

For comments or story ideas for Home Front, please send me an email at homefront@cnn.com. You can check out our column at cnn.com/homefront.

That's it for me. NEWSROOM with Brooke Baldwin begins next.

[14:00:39]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: Brianna, thank you so much. Hi there. I'm Brooke Baldwin. You are watching CNN on this Friday afternoon. Thank you for being here.

Russia is ready, willing and able to interfere in the 2020 election. That is the warning we have heard for months and months now from top U.S. intelligence officials from the President's former top Russia adviser and from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAN COATS, FORMER DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Foreign actors will view the 2020 U.S. elections as an opportunity to advance their interests.

CHRISTOPHER WRAY, F.B.I. DIRECTOR: We certainly are seeing and have never stopped seeing really since 2016 efforts to engage a maligned foreign influence.

FIONA HILL, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S FORMER TOP RUSSIA ADVISER: Right now, Russia's security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election.

We are running out of time to stop them.

ROBERT MUELLER, FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL: They're doing it as we sit here, and I expect to do it during the next campaign.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BALDWIN: So with all of that, you might expect President Trump to

take concrete steps to protect the votes of millions of you, and instead he has ousted Joseph MaGuire, the man tasked with overseeing the nation's intelligence agencies.

It comes after a briefing held with lawmakers last week where according to sources, officials spelled out Russia's efforts to meddle in our elections -- again.

They range from hacking and weaponizing social media to attacking election infrastructure. And the sources add that while Russia prefers Trump be reelected, it also wants to spark questions about the integrity of U.S. elections.

Let's start at the White House with our correspondent there, Kaitlan Collins. And Kaitlan, we've learned that the President was pretty ticked off about a couple of things.

One, the information that we shared, you know, to the fact that House Intel Chairman Adam Schiff was present for the briefing and that Trump found out about all of this not from the Intelligence Community, but from one of his own Republican Congressional allies, Devon Nunes.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, he totally found out from Nunes. It's not clear why the President wouldn't know that lawmakers were being briefed on this, why the President was briefed on it the following day, but he is angry about it.

That is something we do know and he was taking that anger out on the acting Director of National Intelligence at the time, no longer Joseph MaGuire who of course, wasn't the one doing the briefing. That was one of his deputies, this Shelby Pierson figure who was someone who took over this job, which is essentially to coordinate election security.

She was put into that job by Dan Coats, and she is the one who was briefing those officials, and of course, now the President is angry about this. Joseph MaGuire is out of a job. The President has instead installed a top loyalist in that job for the time being as he searches for a more permanent successor.

But Brooke, as we're looking at this today and this timeline of events, though, officials are insisting it's coincidental that MaGuire was pushed out of this job at this time, because he did have a deadline coming up.

At the time this report came out, you know, it's really hard to ignore the chain of events here and how that briefing happened on a Thursday, the Oval Office meeting where he got angry with MaGuire happened on a Friday.

And of course this week, we found out that MaGuire is no longer going to be leading the Intelligence Agencies in that position anymore.

And Democrats say it's a sign that the President is putting in his message out there to Intelligence officials that if they bring to him Intelligence he doesn't like, then their jobs are going to be at risk. BALDWIN: Kaitlan, thank you for the reporting. The President's

removal of the nation's top acting spy chief continues, a month-long series of firings and reassignments of key administration officials the President believes betrayed him.

This unprecedented purge is now clearing the way for President Trump to replace them with, as Kaitlan just said, loyalists and political allies, right, that he really consider so loyal to him.

CNN national security correspondent Kylie Atwood is with me now. And so I see a lot of faces on your screen. Walk me through, you know, just this staggering past couple of weeks of purging by President Trump.

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: All right, well, let's start with the beginning, Brooke. Just two days after President Trump was acquitted by the Senate, he started with firing two officials who provided witness testimony as part of the House Impeachment Inquiry.

Those officials were, first, Gordon Sondland. He was the U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. who was appointed by President Trump, fired days after President Trump was acquitted.

Also National Security Council official Alexander Vindman. Vindman was the top Ukraine official who also provided public testimony. He was escorted off of White House grounds.

We should note that his brother, who also worked at the National Security Council, was escorted off of White House grounds, even though he didn't provide any testimony.

[14:05:19]

ATWOOD: So then we fast forward a few days, and we get to February 19th, this week and this is where there were a lot of changes that went down.

So first of all, we found out that Rick Grenell who is the current U.S. Ambassador to Germany, is going to be taking over in an acting capacity as the acting Director of National Intelligence. He is the one who's going to be taking over for Joseph MaGuire who is currently -- who was currently serving in that acting capacity.

Now, this was a shock to many people, because Rick Grenell doesn't have any Intelligence experience. What he does have is the confidence of President Trump. He is a loyalist to President Trump.

Now, when this came down, there were a lot of questions about how this decision came to fruition, and that is why we see Devin Nunes here.

He is the person who told President Trump about a briefing that was provided to the House Intelligence Committee last week. And during that briefing, they told the House Intelligence Committee that it was indeed true that Russia was trying to get President Trump reelected in 2020, and President Trump was frustrated with essentially his current National Security officials because they provided that information to Congress.

And so that is when we saw this change happen with MaGuire being ousted and Grenell coming into his space.

We also have John Rood here. John Rood is a top Pentagon official. He is someone who had warned the administration about not wanting to withhold this security assistance from Ukraine and earlier this week, he said he was resigning because President Trump had requested him to.

And then we get to just yesterday. There's even more. National Security adviser who had been working on Russia, who had been moved up then to be the Deputy National Security adviser, she is moving over to the Energy Department.

Victoria Coates is someone who had -- there had been rumors about her being the author of "Anonymous," that book that President Trump doesn't like. The White House has denied those rumors, but she is still moving out of her post at the White House.

And the last person we have here is Kash Patel. He is a National Security Council official. He is moving over to O.D.N.I., the Director of National Intelligence as a senior official alongside Rick Grenell.

Kash Patel is seen as someone who is very close with Republicans. He actually worked for Devin Nunes, and so he is someone who had discredited reports that Russia was trying to prop up and support President Trump in 2016.

So we now have a situation where there are two very political officials heading into top jobs in the U.S. Intelligence Community and this is all as a result of President Trump being acquitted during the impeachment -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: That was a lot. You've got to a breath. That's a lot of people. Kylie Atwood. With all of that, we're going to come back to the last guy you just named checked here in this discussion.

Josh Geltzer is a former Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council and Katrina Mulligan is Managing Director for National Security and Internal Policy at the Center for American Progress.

So welcome to both of you. Let's dive in. Just for both of you. I just want to read this quote that jumped out of a lot of stuff, so former C.I.A. Director John Brennan calls the departure of D.N.I. Chief MaGuire and his deputy and I quote, "a virtual decapitation of the intelligence community." Your response? First, Katrina.

KATRINA MULLIGAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AND INTERNAL POLICY, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: I mean it really is, you know, the President, he is entitled to his policies. But he is not entitled to his Intelligence.

The Intelligence is what it is. Their responsibility is to provide that information to him to inform decision making. What he does with it, that's his call, but by trying to install political operatives in that role, it really is, I think, a serious situation for the Intelligence Community.

BALDWIN: Josh, what do you think? Decapitation? How would you put it?

JOSH GELTZER, FORMER SENIOR DIRECTOR FOR COUNTERTERRORISM AT THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: I think that's right. This all reflects a President who can't handle the truth. He can't handle the truth about 2016 and Russia's efforts to help get him elected, and he apparently can't handle the truth about 2020 and Russia's continuing efforts apparently to get him reelected.

And so rather than hear that from an Intelligence Community that will try to feed him the facts and the analysis as best they understand it, he instead wants people who will tell him what he wants to hear.

BALDWIN: Let's come back to Kylie's final name that she had on that big wall. So while the top two Intelligence officials are leaving, there is this surprising new hire. This top staffer to Devin Nunes who helped discredit the Russia investigation.

He will be advising Richard Grenell, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany and Trump loyalist, who you know, as we have been reporting has zero Intelligence experience at any level is now the acting D.N.I. So Katrina to you? What are your thoughts on that?

[14:10:27]

MULLIGAN: I mean, it's very troubling. I mean, it's important to remember that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence does a lot of things besides just advice the President. That is one very important part of their role, but they're also there to manage the Intelligence Community, to make important tradeoffs about where we invest, where we don't, what the Intelligence Community's priorities are.

Putting a political operative in a role to both consume and receive our nation's most sensitive intelligence, but also to be advising on things that -- you know, wholly outside of -- it sounds like his experience -- it's not just a bad move, it really, I think puts the Intelligence Community and the career civil servants there in an untenable position.

I mean, you know, I don't know how they can possibly be expected to trust the motives and intentions of the people that are being brought in to lead them, when those people are out there, you know, saying -- you know, I mean, Mr. Patel has been quoted as saying some extremely troubling things and about conspiracies about the Intelligence Community, conspiracies about the executive branch and then now --

BALDWIN: But the common denominator is loyalty, right?

MULLIGAN: Yes.

BALDWIN: and Josh to you, Trump didn't want Congress to know. When you first heard that, what did you think?

GELTZER: Well, this is one of the things Donald Trump got himself impeached for, right, obstruction of Congress. He does not believe that a co-equal branch of government should have access to documents, to people's testimonies, should conduct oversight.

He wants to be left alone, contrary to a constitutional system in which Congress is supposed to check the executive and part of checking the executive is understanding the intelligence flowing to the executive, so that Congress can ask questions about how is the United States responding? How are we coping with challenges like election interference?

But Trump doesn't want Congress to ask those questions. So he doesn't want Congress to see that information in the first place.

BALDWIN: And Katrina, coming back to a point you were making just about, like putting yourself in the shoes of folks in the Intelligence Community, you know, both of you, as just we move forward. How will the I.C. respond?

How will the Intelligence Community respond? Do you foresee resignations ala those four prosecutors in the Roger Stone case? Or do you see these officials, you know, holding firm, staying on the job, but continuing to find their own ways to sound the alarm? Katrina, first to you.

MULLIGAN: I mean, I think that -- look at my 10 years of experience in the Intelligence Community, there were no more apolitical, nonpartisan professional career civil servants anywhere.

So I think they're going to do what they're trained to do. They're going to provide information, whether he likes it or not to the President of the United States. I think they're going to be hesitant. I think they're going to be guarded.

I think they're going to have to take into account considerations that they really shouldn't have to take into account because this President is making it impossible for them not to.

But you know, they're going to do it with dignity. And, you know, Shelby Pierson showed she already is.

BALDWIN: Josh, close this out. What would you do if you're in their shoes?

GELTZER: I have a lot of faith that the rank and file of the Intelligence Community will keep doing their jobs, even as they are, of course aware of what's happening politically, but trying not to be affected by it.

And it's the jobs of others such as House Democrats to make the most of that, to support them and utilize that work and if that means calling Joe MaGuire to an unclassified hearing, with talking points prepared by those career people about what Russia really is doing for the 2020 election, I think they need to do that right away, frankly.

BALDWIN: Yes, it's a question in many people's minds as we get closer to November, like will my vote count? What is Russia up to? We need to get to the bottom of that.

Josh and Katrina. Thank you both.

We are just hours away. Speaking of the primary, so far, the big next primary contest is in Nevada, it could be make or break for several of these candidates who are bleeding cash fast. Those new details ahead.

And does it pay to cheat in America? My next guest says look no further than Major League Baseball and the President's pardon spree for the answer.

And why is the President complaining about the South Korean film "Parasite" winning the Oscar for Best Picture of the Year? Let's talk about that.

It's Friday. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Back in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:19:14]

BALDWIN: The Nevada caucuses are tomorrow and the stakes couldn't be higher for some of the candidates who may face a critical turning point depending on how folks in Nevada vote, and it also has a lot to do with money.

First, though, to our correspondents who are covering the Democrats as they make their final pitch to the voters, CNN's Arlette Saenz starts us off with a Biden campaign. Hi, Arlette.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Brooke, Joe Biden is making his final pitch to voters here in Nevada as the caucuses approach tomorrow. And over the past 24 hours, he has really zeroed in on gun control right here in the city where the largest mass shooting in modern U.S. history took place just over two years ago.

And he is trying to draw a contrast with Bernie Sanders when it comes to his record on guns, pointing out Sanders passed a vote on a bill that shielded gun manufacturers from liability.

Now, Biden is also trying to rely heavily on minority support here. He picked up an endorsement from the Latino Victory Fund on Thursday, and he has also spent a good portion of the week courting black voters as he is hoping for a stronger finish here to propel him into more diverse states like South Carolina and those Super Tuesday contests.

Now, let's check in with Ryan Nobles with the Bernie Sanders campaign.

[14:20:25]

RYAN NOBLES, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: If you're looking for a glimpse into the confidence of the Bernie Sanders campaign, not just here in Nevada, but across the country, just look at his travel schedule. He has been all over the country not just focused on Nevada, and South

Carolina, but he's been to Colorado to Texas, and he is spending most of today in California.

They are running a national campaign, they can do that because of the resources they have at their disposal. Sanders will come back here tonight to have a big rally in Nevada to close out his campaign, but then will spend most of Saturday in Texas.

They do feel very confident about their chances here, but there's also an expectations game for Sanders. He is expected to win here tomorrow. If he doesn't, that could stunt some of the momentum that he has as his campaign moves forward. Let's go now to Kyung Lah.

KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A day before the Nevada caucuses, uncertainty hangs over the caucus count. And for the very first time Nevada voters, the Democrats were allowed to early vote.

So some 70,000 Democrats stood in these long lines at the early voting sites. They have to tabulate all of those votes and remember, each vote is three to five candidates that the voter was able to select and lump that with whoever shows up tomorrow to caucus.

Also uncertain is, what is turnout going to look like tomorrow? It is very large. It is going to make the count process that much more complicated. And add to all of this, the confusion with what happened in Iowa. Nevada Democrats want to avoid that. They are still training their volunteers today, for tomorrow -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: All right, all three of you, thank you. As the 2020 race tightens, so is the money for most of these campaigns.

Check out these latest numbers here. Front runner, Bernie Sanders has the most money on hand while Elizabeth Warren has the least.

When you're looking at just the top contenders, you'll note no billionaires are on this graph since Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg are each self-financing their campaigns.

As for Senator Warren, her campaign also took out a $3 million line of credit. So, so far, she's taken $400,000.00 from that, and seeing her financials makes it clearer why she really came out swinging at the debate the other night -- a fiery performance, though indeed paid off, because she is now saying that she surpassed her fundraising goal of $7 million by tomorrow.

Gloria Borger is our CNN chief political analyst. And Gloria, you know, Warren is now saying she has done so well from this debate that she is now actually seeking to raise $12 million by the Nevada caucuses tomorrow. How do you read the line of credit? Is she in dire straits financially or is that overblown?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, she's in less dire straits than she was before the debate. Let's say that nothing succeeds like success. And she did really well at that debate.

BALDWIN: She did.

BORGER: And candidates use that as an opportunity to just raise small donations online, which is what Amy Klobuchar did when she had a good debate, Elizabeth Warren is doing it now.

Line of credit is kind of scary to candidates who aren't billionaires, but they say they raised like $475,000.00 during the debate, so they may not have to use as much of it as they thought they were going to use. But it's there for them as a pad in case they need it.

Because of course, they have to get through not only in Nevada and South Carolina, but then you have Super Tuesday coming up and it's very hard to compete in those states without a chunk of change.

BALDWIN: You mentioned Klobuchar. I'm curious if Amy Klobuchar or Pete Buttigieg are also feeling the financial pressure.

BORGER: Oh, yes. Absolutely. First of all, Pete Buttigieg. He did so well in Iowa and New Hampshire. He was kind of on a roll, but has been having some difficulty lately raising more money because a lot of people think he's not going to do well in Nevada and South Carolina because of a lack of African-American and Hispanic support.

So he put out an SOS to his supporters saying I need to raise a million dollars a day in order to get through this, in order to continue to compete.

We've heard that a lot from campaigns. They are now going directly to voters and saying it's do or die. Remember when Cory Booker did it and Julian Castro did it? They are now being very honest about it and saying, you know, we need this money.

BALDWIN: Let me ask you about the matchup between Bernie Sanders and Mike Bloomberg. Senator Sanders said this about Bloomberg poor debate performance the other night. Check this out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Were you surprised by how unprepared he seemed for some very basic obvious questions at the debate in Nevada?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Yes, I was. I was. And, you know, and if that's what happened in a Democratic debate, you know, I think it's quite likely that Trump will chew him up and spit him out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[14:25:13]

BALDWIN: Do you think that Mike Bloomberg's presence just in this race is actually helping Bernie Sanders?

BORGER: Yes, it did in the last -- it did in the last debate because everybody was largely -- I'm not saying that Sanders escaped unscathed, but everybody was largely attacking Bloomberg. Bloomberg was a very convenient foil for Elizabeth Warren in

particular, as we all heard, and so Bloomberg became the foil and not Bernie Sanders. So it really did help Sanders and I think he knows it.

And I think when we see this next debate in South Carolina, we may see a little bit of a different tactic from some of the candidates who really understand that the person they have to deal with right now, particularly those more moderate candidates, the person they have to deal with is Bernie Sanders.

And it probably hasn't escaped the notice of Elizabeth Warren either. She needs to distinguish herself from Sanders more clearly if she wants to grab some of his voters.

BALDWIN: Gloria Borger, thank you. You mentioned the debate.

BORGER: Sure.

BALDWIN: That's Tuesday. Nevada is tomorrow. Thank you. And then after Nevada, the campaign moves to South Carolina. CNN is now hosting a new series of Presidential Town Halls ahead of that primary there live from Charleston.

It all starts Monday night, eight o'clock Eastern with Michael Bloomberg. Question: Is it now just okay to cheat in America?

My next guest, Max Boots says the Major League Baseball cheating scandal and the President's new pardon spree are setting the dangerous precedents for this country.

And the President takes aim at a new target, the South Korean film "Parasite" after winning the Oscar for Best Picture. Why Trump says we need more films like "Gone with the Wind."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:30:00]