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States Must Finalize Vaccination Plans by Friday; Bill Barr States No Evidence of Fraud That Could Change the Election; Barr Appoints Special Counsel to Investigate 2016 Presidential Campaign Investigators; With No Stimulus Deal COVID Relief Programs End December 31. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired December 01, 2020 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

DR. CELINE GOUNDER, MEMBER, BIDEN HARRIS TRANSITION COVID ADVISORY BOARD: So that's certainly part of logistical challenge here.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: Dr. Celine Gounder, thank you very much. Great to have you on as always. I want to get back to our breaking news this afternoon.

Attorney General Bill Barr breaking with the President, telling the Associated Press today that there is no evidence of fraud that would change the results of the Presidential election. More on that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Welcome back to our breaking news this hour on CNN. Here's what you need to know.

[15:35:00]

The Attorney General of the United States, Bill Barr, in an interview with the Associated Press today said that they have not found a shred of evidence of fraud that would change the election results.

So let's start there. Let's go to our senior Congressional correspondent Manu Raju, and Manu, what are you hearing up on The Hill as a result of this?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I talked to several Republicans about what Bill Barr said, and the Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham just told me moments ago, that he has a lot of confidence in Bill Barr. He takes what he says at face value.

And I asked him, well, shouldn't the President then drop his claims of mass fraud? He said, well, the President needs to be very specific about what his evidence is. Well, the President has not done that yet. He said, well, the President needs to do that.

John Cornyn also told me that he has confidence in Bill Barr. But one Republican Senator, Ron Johnson, said he still wants to investigate these allegations of voting fraud despite what Bill Barr has said.

Now one person who has been quiet about the President's campaign railing against the election has been Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader. And just before the Bill Barr news broke, I asked him why hasn't he spoken out about the President's claims that there was mass fraud in this election when he has yet to prove that case.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY) MAJORITY LEADER: As I've said repeatedly. We have this government for the next three weeks for sure, and what I'm focusing on is trying to accomplish as much as we can during this three-week period, which requires dealing with the government that we have right now. The future will take care of itself. As I've said repeatedly, we're going to go through these processes. The electoral college is going to meet December 14th. There will be an inauguration January 20th.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: So Mitch McConnell side sidestepping the question about the President's claims about voter fraud, not saying why he has not called out the President, why he stayed quiet on this. But the Republicans are overwhelmingly saying, Brooke, is that the next two weeks will work itself out, that the electoral college, when the electors are chosen, the election will be official.

Then Joe Biden will essentially be the president-elect Joe Biden at that point. They're not willing to say that at this point, but they at least indicating all signs are pointing in that direction even if they don't want call out the President or say that he should stop his unsubstantiated claims here -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Got it. Manu, thank you. Let's stay in Washington, let's go to Evan Perez, he's over at the Justice Department. And so, Evan, on top of all of this coming in from Bill Barr, you have another headline that Bill Barr has appointed John Durham as special counsel investigating the 2016 campaign investigators. Tell me more.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Brooke, it looks like 2016 is never going to be over. You have Bill Barr now saying that John Durham, who he appointed earlier this year to take a look at the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation that dates back to 2016, he had appointed him to take a look at that, a second look at the sort of investigation of the investigators.

Now he has made him a special counsel, which means that once Joe Biden takes office, and presumably he would replace the U.S. attorneys around the country. That is the practice generally. These are political appointees. John Durham, of course, would be one of those people that might have to leave office once Joe Biden takes the helm at the White House.

It means that John Durham can remain as special counsel continuing this investigation, according to the Justice Department and these papers that they just released to the public today, or this afternoon. They say that the Attorney General made the appointment in October before the election but did not want to release that information because of the election in order to not affect the election.

But that appointment means that John Durham is going to continue his investigation into the Joe Biden presidency. It's sort of a bit of a grenade that the Trump administration is leaving behind for Joe Biden.

BALDWIN: So hang on. So even once Joe Biden is inaugurated January 20th, his new A.G. couldn't fire Durham and put an end to the investigation?

PEREZ: No, it's clear that they can, but politically, it would be, obviously, a very devastating thing. You would have to imagine that Joe Biden, who is making, you know, a push to sort of restore normalcy in Washington, to sort of bring things back from where Donald Trump, who violated all the norms and threatened multiple times to fire the Special Counsel Robert Mueller, you'd think that Joe Biden wouldn't want to do that.

Obviously, Joe Biden can do that, and he could order the new Attorney General, whoever that is, to get rid of the special counsel. We don't expect that Joe Biden would do that, because of the political implications that it would have. And keep in mind, Brooke, from what we can tell, from the sources that we've talked to, Durham hasn't really found that much. He's not done with his investigation.

[15:40:00]

We knew that it wasn't going to be done before the election as President Trump and Bill Barr wanted him to be, but you know, we knew this work was going to continue. But we don't anticipate that there's any big, huge, you know, revelations to come, it's just going to take a while.

BALDWIN: Man, they can't quit 2016.

PEREZ: No. It's not over.

BALDWIN: Evan, thank you.

Joining me now to discuss all of this, CNN political commentator and former Republican U.S. Congressman Charlie Dent. Congressman Dent, I'm glad I'm talking to you today. OK, let's start with just the Bill Barr news, right, that the President's own A.G. is totally pouring cold water on the President's continuous claims up through today claims of fraud in 2020. But that he is also -- you heard Evan reporting -- keeping that investigation open into 2016. What do you think about all this?

CHARLIE DENT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, Brooke, I guess my first comment would be it's a belated revelation from the Attorney General. I'm glad he made the statement, but he didn't have to talk to too many people to make that statement because he could have talked to his own Homeland Security department. And Mr. Krebs and his cyber- team, it said it was a clean election. One can talk to the secretaries of states of both parties in many states that have said they run thorough, clean and fair elections where there were no irregularities. At least nothing significant anywhere to affect the outcomes.

So this is hardly newsworthy in my view the Attorney General's made this discovery, now on the Special Counsel, well that is some news, and it just seems to me it is a bit of a land mine, as Evan Perez suggested. It's politically volatile for the (INAUDIBLE) administration, but at the same time, you know, it would be difficult for Joe Biden to fire the special counsel. It would be kind of like an Archibald Cox moment like during the Watergate days, but hey, Durham hasn't found anything so far. Maybe he won't find anything as Special Counsel either.

BALDWIN: I think back on your first point, I think one of the reasons why coming from Bill Barr is so newsworthy, is just because he was the one who said, launch the investigations into fraud. And he has been such a Trump loyalist, right. That it's coming from Bill Barr is significant. Do you think that now that Bill Barr has said this out loud, Congressman, that more Republicans will do the same?

DENT: Well, I certainly hope so, because we've known since November 7th when Pennsylvania was called by various news entities, including CNN, that this election was over. And I think if you talk to Republican members of Congress, at least privately, they will certainly acknowledge that Joe Biden is the president-elect and that this outcome is not going to be overturned. I do hope more say it publicly.

Some are saying, so Senator Toomey and others have been pretty out outspoken about it, but it's unfortunate that so many have chosen just to remain silent. Because what President Trump is doing, he's taking a wrecking ball to democratic institutions, and none more important than the election process itself. And he's undermining people's faith and confidence in the election so much so that in Georgia he's going to depress Republican vote for those Senate candidates.

BALDWIN: That's exactly what I wanted to ask you about. Because we know Trump's going to Georgia this weekend to campaign, and if you are Senator Loeffler or Senator Perdue, do you want him there?

DENT: Well, I certainly would want him there to tell his voters to tell his voters to come out and support the two Senators. That's what I would want him to do, but if the President is going to go down there and say, don't vote by mail and the process is rigged, well then he's sending a message to Georgia Republicans that their votes really don't matter. It doesn't count. Why vote if the whole election outcome is predetermined?

I mean this is crazy, so I mean if the President's going to be able to control his mouth and just say, come out and support these candidates, vote however you choose, by mail or in person, just vote. But he's incapable of that kind of message discipline.

BALDWIN: Listen, my final question, you may say, this is crazy, nearly 74 million Americans voted for him. There are still so many people who are sharing Trump's nonsense online. How do we get back to a place based in reality, Charlie Dent?

DENT: Well, you know, it's incumbent on leaders in both political parties to stand up and defend democracy here at home. And we've always been doing a great job of defending it overseas, telling people in other countries that they need to embrace democratic values, representative government, it's the path forward

for mankind.

And sadly, we have to actually reinforce it here in our own country because we have a President of the United States who just doesn't appreciate the sanctity of the election process and is trying to conscript others to help him steal an election that he lost. I mean that's what's happening in America. I never thought I'd see it in my lifetime, and I'm hoping when the next administration we'll be able to get back on track with these democratic values.

BALDWIN: Congressman Dent, great to have you on, thank you so much.

DENT: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: President-elect Joe Biden is introducing his economic team. We have details on that next.

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[15:45:00]

BALDWIN: Help is on the way, that is the promise today from President- elect Joe Biden as he formally announced his economic team today. Biden was joined by vice president-elect Kamala Harris and their six nominees who were chosen to help get the country back on its feet.

Biden promised his team would, quote, create a recovery for everybody. CNN's MJ Lee is live in Wilmington, Delaware. And MJ, you were in the room for the announcement. What stood out to you?

[15:50:00]

MJ LEE, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, a couple of things stood out to me being at this event, the first was the real diversity of this team that Biden has put forward. Obviously, we've heard him talk a lot about how important that is as he begins to form his government.

There were six people on stage and four of them were women. There were several people of color. And they were all folks that talked a lot about sort of their own little middle class backgrounds and sort of the economic hardships that they personally experienced. So that was certainly noteworthy, I thought.

And another was sort of the daunting task that all of these folks when they spoke talked about being ahead of them. These were not people who were underselling the task that they had ahead, how difficult of an economic crisis they were going to be inheriting next year. And keep in mind for some of these folks they were actually directly

involved in the government's response to dealing with the economic crisis back in 2008 and now here we are12 years later, they have another economic recession that they are inheriting, compounded by this COVID-19 pandemic.

And I think the other thing that really stood out was the overwhelming focus on directing help to underprivileged communities, whether it is low income families, whether it is people of color who we know these communities have been disproportionately affected by this pandemic.

And, you know, this obviously is sort of a policy posturing and at policy positions that they are taking. But make no mistake this is also a political message coming from this team, right. We have heard Biden sort of hammer home that this idea of Scranton versus Park Avenue. So we saw his economic team really stressing that message as well today -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: MJ, thank you for all of that.

Rick Newman joins me now, he's a senior columnist with Yahoo Finance. And Rick, good to see you. Secretary Mnuchin has been working with Congress trying to get a stimulus through. Do you think Janet Yellen and her team will have better luck?

RICK NEWMAN, COLUMNIST, YAHOO FINANCE: Well, that's a great question. You know, we've got news today, we've been talking about this, that this bipartisan group of members of Congress have agreed on around $900 million of stimulus. It seems like, honestly, nothing is going to happen until we have those two Georgia runoffs on January 5th, so that we're going to know who controls the Senate? Is it Democrats or Republicans?

It seems like both sides just want to know who has the most leverage and I guess they're both willing to roll the dice. I mean, Biden today did make the point that whether there is an interim stimulus bill in the lame duck session or not, we are going to need robust aid for the economy once he takes office on January 20.

I tell you if Republicans control the Senate as they do now, I see no reason why Mitchell McConnell would raise his bid which is currently around $500 billion in new stimulus, maybe a little bit higher, $700 billion but nowhere near the 2 trillion that Nancy Pelosi wants.

BALDWIN: Americans are paying such close attention, you know how many millions of people have been struggling, you know, just through this whole pandemic. But you look at the numbers on Wall Street and they totally don't jive with how people on main street are feeling. Stocks are taking off as small businesses continue to shutter. How does this economic team under a Biden administration try to bridge that gap?

NEWMAN: I don't think they would want to bring the stock market down because you look at what's happening in the economy, say, at least something's working. The reason the stock market is doing as well as it does could really be summed up in a couple of points. Number one, Federal Reserve stimulus has a ton to do with it -- record

low interest rates. Fiscal stimulus helped and companies do think that they see the end of the coronavirus pandemic around the corner.

As you pointed out that is not helping the majority of people who have lost their jobs here. We're still 10 million jobs below where we were in February. So you need to have more policies that are going to help people from the bottom and, you know, we probably don't need as much aid for corporations. We do need a lot more unemployment aid. We probably need more stimulus checks. Figure out what to do about those eviction moratoriums that are going to expire on December 31st, and we're going to have a lot of people just losing their homes and apartments.

So you really need to figure out how to help the people from the bottom and honestly that's always the problem. The people at the top just don't need the help the way the people at the bottom do.

BALDWIN: Just listening to MJ's reporting though when you look at some of these folks on the team at least some of them have experience from when it was also awful during the economic downturn of 2008. It's like you have that plus a pandemic. And we're in a new place.

Rick Newman, great to see you, thank you so much for coming on, we'll talk again here.

NEWMAN: See you.

BALDWIN: We want to get back to our breaking news this afternoon. Attorney General Bill Barr is breaking with the President, telling the Associated Press this afternoon that there is no evidence of fraud that would change the election results. More on that next

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. We begin with breaking news today.

A new blow to President Trump's wild and baseless claims that the election was rigged. That, of course, is a claim based on no credible facts or evidence. This afternoon, yet another Republican official, this one has been very loyal to President Trump is risking Mr. Trump's wrath by making a factual assertion about the integrity of the 2020 election.