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Trump Fires Top DHS Cybersecurity Official Who Rejected Voter Fraud Claims; Georgia Election Audit on Track to Finish Today And Affirm Biden Win; Michigan's Largest County Certifies Results After GOP Reversal; Trump Proponents Suggesting State Legislature Pick Electors for Trump; Trump Fires Top Official Who Called Election Most Secure in American History; New York City Schools Close As Coronavirus Cases Climb. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired November 18, 2020 - 15:30   ET

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

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BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: Today marks 11 days that President Trump hasn't had any public events on his schedule, an oddity even for this administration. But while the President stays inside the White House only leaving to play golf, he is fuming on Twitter, continuing to insist that he won the election and taking down the people in his administration who are trying to confront him with reality.

This time Chris Krebs here, he fired Chris Krebs, the DHS official who had repeatedly shot down the President's baseless voter fraud conspiracies. So, to the White House we go to Kaitlan Collins, and Kaitlan, what do you know about Krebs' firing?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, he expected to be fired, Brooke, because he had been pushing back and contradicting the President on things that were not true or had no evidence to back them up. And so the writing was kind of on the wall for a few days. And just plainly put, the President fired him for saying what was true about the election.

Saying it was the most secure election in U.S. history, but also disputing what the President has been claiming which is that there these voting systems that changed or altered or deleted votes. Which Krebs and several other state and election officials are signed onto that statement, it wasn't just him alone, we should point out, saying this was the most secure election in U.S. history.

And I was told by sources basically the President had been fuming about it since last week when that statement came out, so really the only surprise was that it took this long for the President to do so. But what you're seeing happen on Capitol Hill today is though this is clearly a firing because of retaliation by the President. There's basically no pushback from Republican Senators who are saying the President has the right to do what he did by having who he wants in these positions, even though this was clearly retaliatory for that statement.

So all of this is happening, though, Brooke, as the President is staying behind the scenes and his aides are answering basically no questions on these major personnel decisions or major decisions like the troop drawdown that we saw yesterday.

And the President himself also isn't answering these questions, Brooke, because he has not taken our questions in over two weeks. And the press secretary today also would not take our questions despite walking by reporters three separate times, and so you're just seeing this pattern of the President making these big moves behind the scenes without anyone really answering for them up front.

And we should note, the President has been spending a lot of time here at the White House. It looks like he's going to spend even more time here, because typically he goes to Mar-a-Lago during the week of Thanksgiving, but we are now told he's going to stay back here in Washington at the White House for the first time since he's been in office.

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Though we are told that despite all of, you know, the madness happening, there is still expected to be that traditional turkey pardon here in the Rose Garden next week.

BALDWIN: So we shall see him pardoning a turkey. Kaitlan, thank you. And you mentioned Chris Krebs. We've got a friend of Chris Krebs coming up in just a little bit who's spoken to him since his firing. We'll get the scoop there. Kaitlan, thank you.

Also the Trump campaign just formally requested a partial recount in the state of Wisconsin despite Joe Biden winning the counties in question by tens of thousands of votes. So what's going on? That's next.

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BALDWIN: I want to go through some of the numbers with me here. The Trump campaign is paying $3 million for a partial recount in Wisconsin. They announced today a recount in two of the largest heavily Democratic counties, Milwaukee and Dane Counties both as you can see went to Joe Biden by huge margins.

It's just the latest move in President Trump's attempt to without evidence, push the narrative that this was a fraudulent election. And it comes on the heels of a major blow the President's legal challenges, this one coming from Michigan in Wayne County, the largest in the state, and the county that effectively solidified Joe Biden's win there. Republican members if the election board backed down from blocking the certification of Biden's victory. They reversed course only after pressure and outcry like this from people in Wayne County. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NED STAEBLER, BUSINESS OWNER: The law isn't on your side, history won't be on your side, your conscience will not be on your side.

REV. WENDELL ANTHONY, MEMBER, NAACP NATIONAL BOARD OF DIRECTORS: Shame on you. Shame on you for leading to this level of corruption. You have disavowed your right to even sit in the seats that you occupy.

SANDRA SCOTT, DETROIT RESIDENT: I have worked every election every day since 1996. The claims of fraud are baseless.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: so that's Michigan. What about Georgia? We will soon get the results pf Georgia's recount, another state that President Trump is contesting. They are on track to certify results at some point by the end of today and affirm Joe Biden's win.

Those ongoing legal efforts to challenge election results are not only proving futile but along the way, they are signaling the desperation of a sore loser. Take a look here. Michigan, Joe Biden won by more than a 148,000 votes, which, just a little perspective for all of us, is significantly more than Trump won the state by in 2016 but you didn't see Hillary Clinton challenging the results then, did you?

Same in Pennsylvania, that we know is a tipping point in the election and President Trump is contesting this. Joe Biden won it by more than 82,000 votes. And again, it was much closer back in 2016, Hillary Clinton accepted those results like every candidate has done before.

With me now, Adav Noti, former FEC official and Senior Director of Trial Litigation and Chief of Staff at Campaign Legal Center. So Adav, thank you so much for being with me, and I want to start just with Michigan. How irregular is this that this group of key Republicans on this, you know, elections board tried to delay certification of votes that aren't in question?

ADAV NOTI, SENIOR DIRECTOR, TRIAL LITIGATION AT CAMPAIGN LEGAL CENTER: Yes, that was unfortunate what happened in Wayne County last night, but, you know, it's important to keep in mind that ultimately it only lasted a couple hours, and wisely, you know, they reversed themselves. I think if they hadn't reversed themselves, the courts in Michigan would have forced them to in short order.

And, you know, in the bigger picture, aside from that blip in Wayne County for a few hours, the process is actually going fairly well toward certification of the presidential election in all the states around the country, the close states and the other, and we're really moving inevitably towards the conclusion of the process when the electoral college voters meet next month and cast their votes.

BALDWIN: Similar in Georgia, waiting for that certification. They have a little over two hours to certify their election results, and Biden is projected to win Georgia. What do you make of attempts by Republicans to pressure officials in the state of Georgia? NOTI: Well, nobody should be pressuring anybody to disregard legally

cast votes. That's certainly improper, to put it mildly, and maybe illegal. But, again, it's not working. It's failing. The lawsuits are failing, the pressure tactics are failing. And election administrators all around the country are doing their job and they are certifying the results properly and on time and legally, and, you know, each day that goes by, more states certify the results, and soon, you know, all the states that are still in question, you know, the results will be official and final and the process will be over.

BALDWIN: You mentioned lawsuits are failing. We know that Trump's legal challenges continue to fail in court. You know, Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, trying to make a broad case against mail-in voting in a federal courtroom, and that judge not having any of it. What do you make of a federal court judge suggesting that the President's campaign shouldn't even be in the courtroom with this?

NOTI: Well, the suits that have been filed, and there've been almost 30 of them around the country, are really, you know, weak doesn't even begin to describe it. They're quite desperate, and none of them has gone anywhere. I mean they're getting thrown out at the very initial stages. The first time these suits get to court, judges are looking at them and saying, it's not legally valid, it's not factually valid and the suits are failing immediately, they're not succeeding on appeal.

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And they're not really having any effect. I mean I think the campaign's goal is somehow to try to delay the inevitable, but to do that they're going to need to get a court to issue some sort of order saying that there was malfeasance or that there needs to be a delay. And not only are they not getting that, they're not even close, not even getting past the initial stages.

BALDWIN: Last question, Adav, and we know there's this far-fetched idea reportedly being floated by Trump himself that state legislatures should simply overrule the results. You say that's impossible. Tell us why.

NOTI: Well, there are a whole slew of reasons why that can't and won't happen. But maybe the simplest one is just this, now under the Constitution, it's not the states that set when election day is, it's Congress. And Congress has done that for, you know, hundreds of years, and this year Congress set election day as November 3rd.

And that was the last day for anybody to vote and for any state to make changes to its rules for this election. So once election day passes, under the Constitution and under federal law, state legislatures or anybody else can't change the rules. They can't say, well, we had a popular vote but we've decided we're not going to count the popular vote and we're going to decide the winner of our presidential election some other way.

The election was decided on November 3rd by the popular vote in each state, and the state legislatures have no authority to change that.

BALDWIN: Adav Noti, thank you for bringing your expertise to us today in all those ways. Good to have you on.

NOTI: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, I mentioned this a moment ago, we'll talk to the friend of a latest official to be fired by this President. What he has to say about the reputation and career of Chris Krebs.

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BALDWIN: In his latest attempt at undermining election integrity, President Trump fired the very person responsible for our election security. Chris Krebs, the Director of The Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security. He declared this election the most secure in U.S. history. But President Trump fired him last night via tweet. And the reason was this -- because Krebs contradicted the President's baseless claims of voter fraud.

With me now a friend and former colleague of Chris Krebs, Alex Stamos, Director of Stanford Internet Observatory and a former Chief Security Officer over at Facebook. So Alex, thank you for coming on with me. Let's get right to it. You have talked to Chris Krebs since his firing by tweet. What did he say?

ALEX STAMOS, DIRECTOR OF STANFORD INTERNET OBSERVATORY: Well, you know, I think Chris is proud of the work that he and his team did, which they really should be proud of.

He started his work on election security before the 2018 midterms and before the agency he headed, SIO, even officially existed yet. And since then, his seem has coordinated a response across the U.S. government and with all of these thousands and local and state officials who run the election and they did a really incredible job.

It is very difficult to secure something as large as the U.S. election system against adversaries like the Russia government, the Chinese government. And they did a really an incredible job. And I think he's proud of the work of his team. I expect that he also thinks that his team deserved a little bit better than to be fired by tweet.

BALDWIN: Tell me this, because it's my understanding that he expected this firing as far back as June when, you know, Trump started talking about mail-in voting and fraud even back then. I mean what did he say to you about what he assumed was coming his way?

STAMOS: Well, throughout this entire process, Chris has been dedicated to the truth. And I think he knew that there was always a risk that in being truthful and not changing the things he says to fit the political whims of the White House that he was putting himself at risk. But that is what we should have expected and that we got as citizens is for the head of such a critical agency to be focused on doing his best to defend the election and then after the election to only say things that he is absolutely certain about and to not waiver from it. And so, you know, maybe it was a bit expected. The unfortunate part is

that we're even saying that, right? It should not be expected, the President of the United States is going to fire a public servant for doing their job while incorrectly and for not lying.

BALDWIN: I appreciate your candor and I appreciate you saying he, you know, was working in the space of the truth. Let me ask because you work with the Election Integrity Partnership. You know, how would you characterize how this President has, you know, responded to this election and the electoral system as a whole? Final question.

STAMOS: Yes. So there's good news and bad news here. The good news in the 2020 cycle is there's little evidence of foreign interference either through direct cyberattacks against infrastructure or disinformation.

The bad news is that the large amount of disinformation that we have seen on election day and the days afterwards have come from domestic sources and, unfortunately, the President has been a key driver of that.

And that's something that we're really going to have to wrestle with as a society. You know, we can do all this work to keep meddling happening from the outside but when you have a significant portion of the country who is open to believing some pretty crazy and completely technically infeasible conspiracy theories about the election, then we end up with a country that's split in different truths.

And so that's something the Biden administration has to tackle but it's also something that the major social media platforms are going to have to tackle, is getting control of especially the really high end influencers who have millions and millions of viewers or listeners to their content to somehow dissuade them from just completely lying and repeating this over and over again.

BALDWIN: I appreciate that. Alex, thank you so much. Great to have you on.

STAMOS: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Before I let everyone go here. The Trump administration is slapping additional sanctions on the country today.

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The latest sanctions target Iran's Minister of Intelligence and Security, as well as colonel in Iran's Revolutionary Guard. The State Department says that they committed gross violations of human rights. These latest sanctions come days after "The New York Times" reported that President Trump asked aides, what possibilities he had for an offensive strike on Iran's main nuclear site.

And the huge story back to that. Just this afternoon, coming into us. New York City home of the nation's largest school district has just announced it is closing starting tomorrow. Closing school as cases rise. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)