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Trump Faces Second Impeachment, Says He Won't Attend Inauguration; Pelosi Calls Trump Unhinged and Should Not Have Nuclear Codes; House Dems Eye Quick Impeachment Vote by Next Week; Interview with Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA) about Second Impeachment Against Trump. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired January 08, 2021 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: The Biden administration of course planning more stimulus in the near term along with investments in infrastructure and clean energy, it says should help the jobs market.

Thanks for joining us today. A very busy day of breaking news. Hope to see you Sunday morning for "INSIDE POLITICS." And stay with us, Brianna Keilar picks it up right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: I'm Brianna Keilar, and to our viewers here in the U.S. and around the world, America is a nation engulfed in competing crises.

After the brazen insurrection at the nation's Capitol in Donald Trump's name, the president is now on the verge of becoming the only president to be impeached twice today, and now he is announcing that he will not attend Joe Biden's inauguration which is one of the country's most symbolic acts for a peaceful transfer of power.

The decision caps a week of unparalleled division and violence like we haven't seen in the heart of America's democracy. As we are now learning that a fifth person has died from Wednesday's siege at the Capitol by Trump incited rioters. The Capitol flag is now at half- staff for one of its own, Officer Brian Sicknick. He died from wounds that he received during the insurrection according to Capitol Police.

Now prosecutors are about to open a federal murder investigation and the president has yet to offer a public word of condolence. What he finally did say after the marring of the seat of American democracy that he will be leaving the White House. But it has not these stopped calls for his impeachment because there is an intensifying fear that the worst could still be ahead of us and that the nation cannot risk Donald Trump sitting as president even with just 12 days left to go.

The assistant House speaker telling CNN that Articles of Impeachment could be brought to the House as early as next week. And this time a Republican senator says he is willing to weigh this option.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BEN SASSE (R-NE): The House, if they come together and have a process, I will definitely consider whatever articles they might move because as I've told you I believe the president has disregarded his oath of office. He swore an oath to the American people to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. He acted against that. What he did was wicked.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And this just in. Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has told her party members that she spoke to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chairman, General Mark Milley, about keeping the nuclear codes from President Trump. I'm now specifically quoting her letter here, "The available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike." That from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

President Donald Trump may have finally accepted the results of the election but that doesn't mean that he'll play nice. The president announcing that he will not attend Joe Biden's inauguration and this comes hours after the president released a video where he seemed to acknowledge his loss, something that he had not done. He also finally denounced the attack on the Capitol. But we have learned that these remarks were not the president's idea.

Our Kaitlan Collins is live for us from the White House.

Kaitlan, tell us more about this.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, senior staff had to go to the president and basically say if you do not come out and offer a further denunciation, a real denunciation basically of what happened on the Capitol yesterday, and this is a conversation that happened yesterday, referencing Wednesday, they said that the president was going to be removed from office.

That a pretty blunt warning that they gave him as the president was kind of sulking in the Oval Office as we were told yesterday, as people were describing his mood, given he was watching so much of the coverage of pure criticism of how he handled the day's events.

And so they said whether it's by your own Cabinet when it comes to the 25th Amendment or lawmakers on Capitol Hill impeaching you, and trying to remove you from office yet again, you are going to be removed one way or another if you do not take further action.

And so the president said OK, he told aides to write that speech that we ended up seeing in that brief video yesterday. He reviewed it and then of course he taped it and released it late last night. But the thing is, it was a sigh of relief for senior White House staff because the president actually did go through with taping it, but their question was, how long is it going to be until the president backtracks on this, because that is a pattern of behavior we've seen with the president over the last several years.

Since he's been in office, he often capitulates to criticism and then tries to backtrack later, and complains that he did that. And so you saw this morning, he's saying he's not going to go to Biden's inauguration. So that comes after the non-concession concession speech that we got last night.

So while last night, he was saying, you know, there will be a new administration, it won't be me in office after January 20th, he's also not going to the inauguration which would have sent a message to his supporters, some of those who breached to the Capitol earlier this week, that the president is making the willful decision not to do so at this moment.

KEILAR: And Kaitlan, are there any more aides that are considering resigning at this point in time?

COLLINS: There are. The window seems to be closing for when staffers are actually going to leave. I think the breaking point was really on Thursday as we were watching and listening from people.

[13:05:03]

But there are others that are talking about it. Two of those are pretty high profile, that includes the White House counsel Pat Cippolone, who you will remember defended the president during his last impeachment trial. Doesn't appear if he dies resign that he could be around if there's another one, if lawmakers move fast enough.

Secondly Hope Hicks is someone. Of course that is a top aide to the president, one of his closest confidants. And she has talked with people about leaving the White House before his term ends. She says she's likely to make a decision probably in the next 48 hours or so based on people who have heard these conversations, but whether or not she actually follows through with it remains to be seen. We've heard a lot of people like the National Security adviser talk about resigning but so far they have not actually followed through.

And people seem to think, you know, the longer they go without actually doing it, you know, that window is closing. There's only 12 days left of the Trump administration. But the fact that Hope Hicks, someone like that, that close to Trump, is even talking about it is a sign of just how much support he's lost, not just on Capitol Hill and in his Cabinet, but even in his inner circle over the way he handled what happened on Wednesday.

KEILAR: Certainly is. Kaitlan, thank you for that live report for us.

Concern over what could happen over these next 12 days is really front and center on the mind of Democratic leaders. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she has reached out to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. She has discussed keeping the president from starting a war or launching nuclear missiles.

CNN's Barbara Starr is tracking this story for us from the Pentagon.

What are you hearing here, Barbara?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, we've got a fairly unusual rare statement from General Milley's spokesman, Colonel Dave Butler. Let me get right to it and read it to you, saying, and I quote, "Speaker Pelosi initiated a call with the chairman. He answered her questions regarding the process of nuclear command authority."

General Milley has not been out in public talking about much of anything lately. This is something he clearly wanted to address. Everybody here at the Pentagon very much on the page of keeping this all very calm.

Speaker Pelosi had questions, here are some of the answers about how nuclear launch works in this country. A president, any president, has sole authority to launch nuclear weapons but is not able to do it on their own. There are very complex procedures, and it all starts with any order has to be legal. There are legal military experts all the way along the chain of command. If this were to happen sitting with the president, sitting with General Milley, sitting with military personnel who are in charge of actually the technical issue of launching weapons.

They have to find that an order is legal. U.S. Military is not permitted of course to carry out illegal orders. They would be obligated to resign if there was an illegal order. And actually, it's a pretty technical process. The president has the authority, but he can't do it by himself. They have to exchange highly classified data, codes, launch codes, target data, what weapons they would use, where the missiles are, where missile silos are located, where submarines are with nuclear weapons on board.

In a real crisis, this can all be done within minutes of course if the nation is under threat. Well, what experts here at the Pentagon had said in the last few minutes is, to be very clear, nuclear weapons are an issue only if the nation is under threat. There's really no legality, no scenario in which a president could just suddenly decide to launch nuclear weapons, and have it legal. So they're very aware of Speaker Pelosi's concerns. They're trying to address them.

But the message to the American people from these military experts is the nuclear weapons have a very strict procedure, it's all safe and secure. And they do not see a scenario where President Trump, if he is president of the United States, would not have that sole authority, although he could not do it by himself and those safeguards remain -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Those safeguards remain. Key words there. Barbara Starr, live for us from the Pentagon.

Republican sources now say some GOP lawmakers will consider voting impeachment, voting to impeach President Trump. This news comes on the heels of House Democrats saying that they are ready to move ahead with impeachment, with a vote as early as the middle of next week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. KATHERINE CLARK (D-MA): We know that we have limited time, but that every day that Donald Trump is president of the United States is a day of grave danger. So we can use procedural tools to get Articles of Impeachment to the floor for a House vote quickly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Lawmakers are pushing for Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president, but that does seem unlikely to happen.

We have Joe Johns live for us on Capitol Hill.

Joe, what more are you hearing from there when it comes to the timeline to start impeachment?

[13:10:06]

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, what we have heard is that it could start as early as next week and there is this conference call going on among the Democratic members on the House side up here on Capitol Hill. I just got an e-mail a couple of minutes ago from a source that said that call is ongoing, in other words it's been going on for about an hour.

There are a few headlines out of that, probably the first one is the speaker said in the call that there is more support for impeachment of President Trump this time around as opposed to the last time he was impeached. She's also making clear that she prefers the president either resigning or the invocation of the 15th -- sorry, the 25th Amendment in order to get the president out of the job. That would be something that the Cabinet would have to do.

But if those two avenues do not work, she says she is willing to go forward and that Articles of Impeachment are being drafted. In fact, Articles of Impeachment, at least one Article of Impeachment, has been circulated that is an article that charges the president of the United States with abuse of power and essentially points back to January 6th and all of the events that occurred there.

There's also that letter that came out a little while ago from the speaker of the House to the membership, and probably the headline out of that is something we've already really discussed, that is the idea that the speaker reached out to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, asking him about available precautions, as she put it, to keep the president from initiating hostilities or using the nuclear codes.

So those are probably the headlines. Other thing, we do have to talk a little bit, I think, Brianna, about the state of play in the House of Representatives, the state of play generally with Republicans.

We also know that despite the reluctance to move forward and people who would just like to run out the clock with the president leaving office on January 20th, there was apparently a screaming match as has been reported between the minority leader of the House of Representatives and the president on the day of the riot up here on Capitol Hill. The minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, telling the president he needed to tell the rioters to move on and leave the Capitol.

Back to you, Brianna.

KEILAR: That's very interesting. He was actually breathing life into that conspiracy theory, Kevin McCarthy was, publicly, that maybe this wasn't President Trump's supporters, but behind the scenes imploring the president to wave them off.

Joe Johns, thank you so much for that great report from the Capitol.

I want to bring in now CNN's chief political correspondent Dana Bash and our chief political analyst Gloria Borger. This is a wonderful group that I love to talk with, and I don't get to see in person.

So it's great to have you on. I wonder, Dana, the president saying, tweeting, after, you know, essentially his kind of concession in his own way, he tweets and then says he's not going to the inauguration. What do you make of this?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That it's just more proof, not that we needed it, but it is more proof that what the president said last night in that video was under duress. Big time duress. Because as our great White House reporters have been getting from their sources, he was told by the very, very few aides still around him, and allies still around him, that if he doesn't do it, then the 25th Amendment or some form of real push to remove him will happen. It's not to say it won't happen right now, but it was an all but certain thing.

I've talked to allies of the president who were trying to get him to go to the inauguration as part of the process that they're pushing him to do as part of that video to try to find some semblance of a way back from, you know, the abyss, even though that's probably very hard, impossible to do at this point, but there was no way. It's just completely out of character with who this man is, Donald Trump, to be able to go and sit there and watch the person who defeated him raise his hand and say that he takes the oath to be the next president.

Never mind the fact that that is what presidents are supposed to do. We know that this is just one of many examples of this president not doing what presidents are supposed to do to show the world that this is a country that stands up for its democratic ideals.

KEILAR: Yes, he --

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Brianna, can I just add to Dana?

KEILAR: Yes, please go, Gloria.

BORGER: I mean, remember, Hillary Clinton went to Donald Trump's inauguration.

[13:15:03] He spent two years screaming lock her up, lock her up, right? She lost to him. She's a former secretary of state, her husband is a former president. She went to Donald Trump's inauguration because she is not a coward. And this is cowardly. And this is also somebody who is desperately in need of the adulation of his political base and he believes they would not approve of, of course, the video that he was forced into doing last night, nor would they approve of him attending his inauguration.

And I want to remind everyone about what Joe Biden told Jake Tapper when he interviewed him on December 3rd. Joe Biden said that he doesn't care personally of course whether Donald Trump is there, but he said it is important in the sense that we are able to demonstrate at the end of this chaos that he's created that there is a peaceful transfer of power with competing parties standing there shaking hands and moving on. And I think that's important. That's from Joe Biden. Obviously Donald Trump cares only about the chaos and not about the peaceful transfer.

KEILAR: Well, look, with the video he did yesterday.

BORGER: Yes.

KEILAR: The impetus for doing that was his own interest. I think that is what is clear about how he was persuaded to do that. He does not see going to the inauguration as being in his interest.

BASH: Absolutely.

KEILAR: Even though it is clearly in the interest of the country, right? Put Joe Biden aside, it is in the interest of the country.

And, Gloria, sources are telling CNN that the White House is in crisis management mode. I mean, I think that's almost an understatement. But what is it like right now?

BORGER: Well, I was told by a source yesterday that the president is effectively cordoning himself off from anyone who might talk sense into him and doesn't want to hear it any more. He has decided what he's decided. He's not taking people's advice. He's asking as our White House reporters have reported, he's asking about this question of whether he can pardon himself or not, and I think the people are trying to figure out whether they ought to stay for the good of the country and be guardrails or whether they should back away.

And otherwise, the president just doesn't want to hear from anyone. So imagine that. It seems worse than the last scenes of Richard Nixon talking to the portraits on the wall.

KEILAR: And you know, Dana, I wanted to ask you about this kind of extraordinary call that the House speaker made to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs about basically checking on and trying to make sure that it is preventable that the president could use the nuclear launch codes. How real is this concern that he could do something, you know, cataclysmic here in final days? BASH: It's very real, Brianna. I mean, how real did anybody think it

was that he would go down and incite a mob to march into the Capitol and do what they did? I think that the failure as people said after 9/11 was the lack of imagination of what, you know, if in the wrong hands, what people can do to create harm, and right now the president has shown only that he is the person who is -- he has the wrong hands.

And I'm just pulling up here, Manu Raju and I got reporting about this call that I believe is still ongoing as we speak that the House speaker is having with her Democratic caucus, and she said, just as a follow-up to her letter about the conversation she had with Milley, she said -- she told her caucus that she got assurances from Mark Milley, who is of course the top military commander, that there are safeguards in place in the event that President Trump wants to launch a nuclear weapon, per sources familiar with that conversation.

This is the speaker of the House having to reassure her caucus that she talked to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to make sure that the commander-in-chief is kept away from the nuclear codes. This isn't because she's being an alarmist, it's because she's being a realist. Let that sink in a second.

KEILAR: Yes. Gloria?

BORGER: Can I just say also you have a president and a vice president who don't seem to be communicating at all because the president is so mad that the vice president didn't do his bidding in the Congress the other day and the vice president is rightly upset that the president and his team weren't concerned about his safety when people were running around the Capitol looking to execute him?

So this is another national security issue, I think, when you have these two top people not in constant communication.

[13:20:08]

I mean, "The Wall Street Journal" today made the case for the president resigning and saving the country from worrying about the things that Dana is talking about right now. But we know that the president does not seem inclined to do it, even if Mike Pence were to say, look, I can pardon you because the president is now saying, oh, well, I can pardon myself.

KEILAR: Yes. Gloria, Dana, it's great to see both of you. Thank you so much for being on today.

BORGER: You too.

BASH: Thanks, Bri.

KEILAR: And next, a Democratic congresswoman will join us, she just got off the phone with her party about moving forward on impeachment. Hear what happened there.

Plus, a former Capitol Hill police officer is going to join us to react to the double standard of the treatment of white protesters and black protesters, or white insurrectionists and black protesters.

And Senator Ted Cruz, one of the ringleaders of the opposition to Joe Biden's win, his win in a democratic election, tries to rewrite history and we will roll the tape.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:25:43]

KEILAR: As we reported earlier, House Democrats say they are ready to move ahead on impeachment as early as next week.

Joining us to talk about this is California Congresswoman Jackie Speier. She's a Democrat on the Intelligence and the Armed Services Committees.

Congresswoman, it has been quite a week. It is good to see you. We are glad you are safe. And thank you for being with us to talk about what is going on right now.

You support bringing immediate Articles of Impeachment. Your Democratic caucus had a call last hour. So what can you tell us about what was discussed, what was decided when it comes to impeachment?

REP. JACKIE SPEIER (D-CA): Brianna, it's good to be with you. I can't give you the results of that caucus call because it's still going on, and I think that all options are on the table. I think there's a group of us that feel very strongly that we need to move forward with the impeachment article for insurrection by the president of the United States.

You know, we're not just doing this for the next 12 or 13 days, we're doing this for generations to come. And if we are not willing to state that the acts by the president of the United States to incite domestic terrorism and insurrection is an impeachable offense, then nothing is an impeachable offense.

KEILAR: OK. So you talk about a group that really wants to move forward here. Are there Democrats who are opposed to moving forward with impeachment?

SPEIER: I haven't heard of any. But again, that conversation is still ongoing. And I think ideally the vice president of the United States, Mr. Pence, should invoke the 25th Amendment. The number of Cabinet members who still exist is dwindling. So getting to a majority there is going to be much more likely. But this president must be stopped in his tracks.

I think that President-elect Biden has made it clear that he wants to heal the country, and we also have to think about what happens on January 21st. But the people that attacked us, and I was one of the members that was in the gallery, lying, you know, face down on the marble as they were pounding on the door, these were anarchists, these were white supremacists, these were anti-Semites, and I think that we've got to call them for what they were and what they are.

I think they were using the president of the United States and I think the president of the United States was using them.

KEILAR: OK. And while I appreciate that this call is still ongoing, you know, we're hearing what you're saying about the prospect of impeachment and as you were saying, essentially it sounds like part of this is for posterity as well, right? To judge this for what it is. But that said, what would the timetable be on impeachment?

SPEIER: Well, clearly we have to move quickly. We would have to, you know, bring the article to the House floor quickly, within the next two or three days, four days. It would probably require us to come back to Washington. I personally don't think this is a vote that we can cast on our phones remotely, but none of those decisions have been made yet.

KEILAR: OK. None of those decisions have been made. But it sounds like we're going to get a really good sense here shortly if you have to move in the next two, three, four days.

SPEIER: Yes. And I do think that there's an effort under way to encourage the vice president to act for members of the U.S. Senate, much like they did when Richard Nixon was under fire to have a group of senators that support the president to go to him and ask him to resign. So there's many avenues that are being pursued presently.

KEILAR: But Richard Nixon lost the faith of Republicans, not Republican lawmakers. I mean, I'm talking about Americans who were Republicans. He lost a lot of support among Americans. And that was part of the reason why even his own party turned on him. That isn't, you know, as far as we can tell necessarily happening right at this moment. The president still retains quite a lot of support. So it seems unlikely that the vice president would move forward with the 25th Amendment.