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L.A. County Reports 1,500+ Deaths in Past Week; COVID-19 Patient Returns to Thank Hospital Staff; Families Mourn Victims of Indonesian Plane Crash; U.S. House to Vote on Impeachment Wednesday; Trump Administration Names Cuba State Sponsor of Terrorism; Prince Charles is Interviewed on Efforts to Fight Climate Change; Acting DHS Secretary Resigns, FBI Warns of 'Armed Protests' at State Capitals. Aired 12-1a ET
Aired January 12, 2021 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello and welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm John Vause.
Coming up on CNN NEWSROOM, American insurgency: the FBI warns last week's riot on Capitol Hill could be repeated on Inauguration Day in every state capital across the U.S.
Impeachment 2.0 and, this time, the wheels of Congress are moving at light speed, a vote expected Wednesday.
And with record numbers dying from COVID-19 in the United States, funeral services are being held in the parking lot at one overwhelmed hospital in L.A.
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VAUSE: We begin with an unprecedented warning from the FBI. Armed protests are being planned at the U.S. Capitol and in all 50 state capitals across the country, in the leadup to Joe Biden's inauguration just over a week away.
Investigators also say there have been threats made regarding the president-elect; the vice president-elect, Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Meantime the acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, is joining a growing list of Trump administration officials resigning in the wake of the Capitol riot.
Several Capitol police officers have been suspended for their alleged roles in the pro Trump insurrection and up to 15 other police officers are under investigation. More details now from CNN's Brian Todd.
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BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A key focus now among federal and local law enforcement agencies, preventing a repeat of Wednesday's deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol.
According to an FBI bulletin obtained by CNN, armed protests are being planned in Washington, D.C. and all 50 state capitols this weekend through Inauguration Day. Officials monitoring online chatter in social media.
JAMES GAGLIANO, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: They're obviously looking at open source things. They are going through in following up in some of these chat rooms and some of these places where extremists tend to coalesce in the dark corners of the Web.
TODD: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, concerned about more violent actors coming to Washington in the run-up to the inauguration, is urging people not to come into the city on Inauguration Day.
MAYOR MURIEL BOWSER (D-DC): Our goals right now are to encourage Americans to participate virtually and to protect the District of Columbia from a repeat of the violent insurrection experienced at the Capitol.
TODD: The Pentagon is bolstering the National Guard's presence in the nation's capitol, with as many as 15,000 Guardsmen to be deployed by Inauguration Day.
Meanwhile, the dragnet for the perpetrators of Wednesday's siege intensifies. At least 20 people have been rounded up across the country and face federal charges. Some are accused of bringing bombs and other weapons to Capitol Hill.
Two men were arrested after photographs showed them wearing body armor and carrying plastic restraining ties inside the Capitol. One man is accused of writing in text messages that he wanted to shoot House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, that he brought guns and ammunition.
One analyst says law enforcement is using sophisticated tools to track down many more suspects.
GAGLIANO: All of the cell phone records, all of the electronic exhaust that that's given off by our cell phones crossing bridges and our and our E-ZPass and license plate readers and then matching that up with available online information, as well as conducting interviews of these people's friends and circles.
TODD (voice-over): And new fallout tonight over the breakdowns that led to the overrunning of the Capitol. Now former Capitol Hill police chief Steven Sund, who resigned last week, tells CNN and "The Washington Post" he was concerned about what was coming in the days before the siege.
Sund says he asked his bosses, the House and Senate sergeants at arms, for permission to request that the National Guard be on close standby. Sund says they turned him down, concerned about the optics.
Sund said that, when the rioting was underway, he pleaded five more times for help, including to the Pentagon for National Guardsmen to be deployed, quote, "I needed boots on the ground, immediate assistance right then and there, helping to form police lines to help secure up the foundation of the United States Capitol Building. They were more concerned with the optics."
TODD: The Army general who was on that call strongly denies Sund's claims, telling CNN that he discussed the need to get a plan approved and that a request for extra National Guard troops was quickly taken to the Secretary of Defense.
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TODD: We also reached out to that House and Senate sergeants at arms for a response to Sund's allegations. They didn't get back to us -- Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
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VAUSE: CNN has learned that Donald Trump, in private conversations, has admitted that he's at least partially blame for last week's riot in the Capitol. According to one source, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy told his colleagues that Trump has acknowledged as much to him.
Another source says McCarthy admitted there is no evidence far-left Antifa activists were part of the riot. Some House Republicans are pushing for a formal censure of President Trump but they will not vote for impeachment.
Regardless, House Democrats are moving quickly on this second impeachment, articles were introduced to the House on Monday. A vote expected maybe as soon as Wednesday. CNN's Ryan Nobles has more.
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RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Tuesday will be a big day here on Capitol Hill. That's when Democrats will begin the process of impeaching President Trump for the second time.
They'll start with a resolution giving vice president Mike Pence 24 hours to invoke the 25th Amendment which is unlikely that he will do. And then on Wednesday they'll take up the actual articles of impeachment.
And it is expected that they'll be able to pass it relatively quickly. They have the votes and it is likely that it will get through the Democratic-controlled House without much of an issue.
The question is, what would become of those articles of impeachment once they are passed?
The current Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell does not appear to be all that interested with moving forward with a trial prior to President Trump leaving office on January 20th.
So, the question is what does Chuck Schumer do with those articles of impeachment? He has suggested that he is willing to move forward with the trial
almost right away, even after President Trump is already out of office.
Now, there is some complications that could happen in terms of the beginning of the Biden administration and invoking his agenda. Schumer has said that they're going to have to try and do both, that means getting some of these nominations confirmed for the Biden cabinet, while at the same time conducting a trial.
Now the vice -- former vice president, soon-to-be president, said that he was concerned about how this process could interrupt his first 100 days in office but he said that it is up to the Senate Democrats to decide how to handle that.
But one thing we know for sure is that it does appear that the House Democrats will move forward with impeaching President Trump once again. He will be the first president in American history to be impeached twice in one term -- Ryan Nobles, CNN, on Capitol Hill.
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VAUSE: Ron Brownstein is CNN's senior political analyst and the senior editor for "The Atlantic." He's with us from Los Angeles.
Ron, good to have you with us for this.
Now one of the House Democrats who worked on the impeachment articles, David Cicilline, he laid out his reasons in the op-ed for "The New York Times," including this line.
"There can be no healing of the divisions in our country without justice for the man most responsible for the horrific insurrection. The president must be held accountable."
I want you to listen to the sounds of healing on his voicemail from Trump supporters.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You poked the (INAUDIBLE) bear this time, you little (INAUDIBLE). You've got 80 million people coming after you, you commie little (INAUDIBLE). If you impeach him, civil war is on, buddy.
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VAUSE: It doesn't seem impeachment's going to do a whole lot to convince Trump supporters to put away their pitchforks and torches.
Will anything appease them, apart from joining the cult?
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, first of all, that isn't -- as you know, I think that is not the right question.
The right question is, what is the proper accountability for an act that was unprecedented in American history? And in many ways, this was the only terminus of the Trump presidency. It has been building in this direction for years, as he has barreled through all -- one restraint after another on the unilateral exercise of power by the president, kind of scoffed at the rule of law.
And Republicans have forgiven and enabled him at each step along the way to where he thought, I think quite understandably that no matter how far he went -- whether he shot someone on Fifth Avenue -- Republicans in Congress would not constrain him. And they very much brought us to this point.
I think the road to the insurrection was paved by the choice of Republicans at each stage, particularly in impeachment, not to put any restraint on the president's behavior.
VAUSE: Yes. You've often said that we don't get to this point overnight. We're at the point now where according to the FBI armed insurgents are planning inauguration day attacks on every state capital.
Here's Chris Krebs. He was in charge of election security until he was fired by Donald Trump.
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CHRIS KREBS, FMR. SURVEY OFFICIAL, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: This is the equivalent of ignoring that pain in your chest for a couple weeks and then all of a sudden you have a catastrophic heart attack.
We are on the verge of what I fear to be a pretty significant breakdown in democracy and civil society here.
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VAUSE: I just wonder if the U.S. has actually gone past the point of no return on all of this.
BROWNSTEIN: Well I don't know if we've gone past the point of no return.
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BROWNSTEIN: But there's no question that Trump really, from the beginning of his emergence as a national figure but certainly as president, has essentially erased the lines between the Republican coalition and the far-right white supremacist, neo-Nazi, anti -- the most hardcore anti-democratic forces in American society.
And he's given them enormous energy and validation and made them feel as though he was speaking to them.
As you saw, so many of the people who stormed the Capitol, threatened a law enforcement, ransacked the building said they were there because they believed he wanted them to be there.
And so this is going to be an enormous challenge for law enforcement under the Biden presidency.
And for that matter, it's a challenge for the Republican Party that is not unlike the situation they faced in the early 1960s, when many wanted to benefit from the energy of the far right John Birch Society.
But ultimately they had to find a way to separate themselves from these extremists.
Not that many Republicans are moving that direction yet but it's hard to imagine that they can continue along this road.
VAUSE: This is the problem for Democrats.
Can they hold -- can they impeach Trump and then have the trial in the senate which will last for months and then at the same time implement Biden's agenda?
All the oxygen will be taken away for the first year, right?
BROWNSTEIN: At least for the first few weeks. They can't do both. Obviously, there is a cost to getting out of the blocks quickly for Biden if you are impeaching and holding a trial in the senate.
But I don't think Biden has a choice. I think his instinct is probably more to look forward than to look back, he would probably try to want to get past this.
But the sense is overwhelming among Democrats even among some Republicans and certainly I think on the public at large that there have to be consequences for what happened.
This was an unprecedented act, it was an act of insurrection, it was an act of violence incited directly by the president of the United States with the assistance of members of Congress who echoed his baseless claims of voter fraud and even the Republicans who didn't echo it, didn't challenge it for weeks.
This is, as Chris Krebs said, a moment of crisis in the democracy. And I think many scholars, John, as you know, have said in the last few days, the only way to kind of bring under control these kinds of movements is to impose consequences, is to impose accountability.
For example, it will be a lot easier to arrest the people who are involved if they didn't just let them walk out of the building in the first place.
So I think there are going be a lot of questions but I think the direction of imposing consequences is unmistakable.
VAUSE: Yes. That seems to be the feeling among many although there are those who say that he's learned his lesson, Donald Trump, he won't do it again. For the next nine days or eight days.
Ron, we'll see you again soon, I'm sure. Good to see you.
BROWNSTEIN: Thank you, John. VAUSE: Still to come, so many COVID casualties, so little space. Hospitals are overwhelmed with patients in tents, hallways, even the gift shop. And now funerals held in parking lots.
Also the grief and heartbreak of families in Indonesia, as the search continues for the remains of victims after Saturday's plane crash, the very latest in a moment.
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VAUSE: Never before have so many in the U.S. been dying from COVID- 19, on average more than 3,000 each day. That means a January is on track to be the worst month of the entire pandemic.
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BIDEN: Three thousand to 4,000 people a day dying is just beyond the pale. It's just wrong.
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VAUSE: The incoming U.S. president there after receiving his second injection of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. Joe Biden has promised 100 million vaccine shots, enough to cover 50 million Americans in his first 100 days in office.
The U.S. CDC says about 9 million Americans have received their first doses, that's about a third of the total doses distributed to the states so far. Last week, the U.S added more than 200,000 new COVID cases each day. That's according to Johns Hopkins University, which is a new record.
The total number of infections nationwide?
Now close to 23 million. In the most populous U.S. state, hard-hit California, nearly 3 million people have contracted the virus and almost 40,000 new cases reported every day. Hospitals just don't have enough space to deal with this crisis. CNN's Sara Sidner shows us where patients and the deceased are now ending up.
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SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Mariachi music slices through the silence. The melody is meant to soothe the family's sorrow. The cruelness of COVID-19 on display. This is a funeral in a parking lot.
JULIANA JIMENEZ SESMA, MOTHER & STEPFATHER PASSED AWAY FROM COVID-19: My mother was a very strong woman and she fought to the very last breath.
SIDNER: Juliana Jimenez Sesma says these are the last words they exchanged.
SESMA: I told her, mom, do not be afraid, for the Lord is with us. I love and may God bless you. Keep strong for me, mom. And all she answered me was, yes, mija. Yes, mija, with that -- with that voice -- with fear.
SIDNER: Sesma lived with and cared for her mom who had a lung condition. Her stepdad had asthma and diabetes. Her brother lives right next door with his young family.
How many people ended up getting it?
Everyone --
SESMA: All of us.
SIDNER: Her stepfather and then mother ended up here, Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital. They fought to live like those filling all the ICU beds now but they died within 11 days of each other. Dr. Jason Prasso treated both of Sesma's parents.
DR. JASON PRASSO, PULMONARY & CRITICAL CARE PHYSICIAN, MLK JR. COMMUNITY HOSPITAL: I just want her to know that we here tried our hardest and, you know, we're really sorry that things went the way that they did.
SIDNER: The terrible scenario was not unusual, as COVID ensnares those who live in multigenerational families and are part of the essential workforce.
PRASSO: We have had the misfortune of seeing this disease run through families and all too frequently take multiple members of a single family.
SIDNER: The state of the art hospital is an oasis of care in the health care desert of south Los Angeles. It is no wonder the heavily Black and Latino neighborhood is suffering disproportionately. The inequities in health care invites death.
DR. ELAINE BATCHLOR, CEO, MLK JR. COMMUNITY HOSPITAL: Diabetes is three times more prevalent here than in the rest of California. Diabetes mortality is 72 percent higher. The life expectancy is 10 years shorter here than in the rest of the state. And all of that is related to this being an under-resourced and underserved community.
SIDNER: That was before coronavirus arrived.
PRASSO: We're running like well over 100 percent capacity.
SIDNER: The 131-bed facility is suddenly treating more than 200 patients, 60 percent of them are COVID patients. They've made space everywhere, tents outside, inside hallways, the prayer room, a former gift shop -- the battle to save a life physically and mentally exhausting.
But on this day, a surprise reminder of why they fight.
ELAINE STEVENS, COVID-19 SURVIVOR: I'm here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my goodness. You look amazing!
STEVENS: I'm back.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, let me see, let me see, you got dancing moves. Oh, yes!
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SIDNER: Seventy-four-year-old Elaine Stevens returns to thank her doctor and nurses. She spent more than 40 days in this ICU before walking out alive.
STEVENS: I made it. A lot of days, I didn't want to make it. But I did it.
SIDNER: As she celebrated a second chance at life, the ceremony for death was still playing out in the parking lot for the Sesma family.
SESMA: Don't let this be you. If you truly love your loved ones, don't let this be you. Continue to, you know, take all the cautions. Take all extra precautions, exaggerate if you have to.
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SIDNER: Sara Sidner, CNN, South Los Angeles.
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VAUSE: The U.K. is opening thousands of vaccination centers to try and speed up vaccine distribution and to inoculate 2 million people every week and ease the strain on an overwhelmed health system.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited one of those centers in Bristol, England, on Monday. He said the U.K. is in a race against time to roll out the vaccines.
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BORIS JOHNSON, U.K. PRIME MINISTER: This is a very perilous moment, because everybody can sense the vaccine is coming in. And they can see that the U.K. is vaccinating large numbers of people who need it most.
And my worry is and Chris' worry is that this is the moment where that could breed a false complacency. That, when you look at what is happening in the NHS, that complacency is not merited.
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VAUSE: Meantime the more contagious variant is hitting Britain very hard. CNN's Nina dos Santos is now reporting from London.
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NINA DOS SANTOS, CNNMONEY EUROPE EDITOR: Amid a surge in coronavirus cases, the U.K. authorities launched a major public health campaign on social media and on the airwaves to try to urge people to stay at home and protect lives.
Essentially the message from the chief medical officer to the U.K. government is behave as though you think you might have coronavirus.
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DR. CHRISTOPHER WHITTY, BRITISH CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER: This puts many people at risk of serious disease and is placing a lot of pressure on our NHS.
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DOS SANTOS: Here in London, the mayor has declared a major incident because there are so many people being taken to the hospital with COVID-19 that some hospitals are at risk of being overwhelmed.
He says that 7,000 people are currently in hospital, thanks to COVID- 19, which is 35 percent higher than back in April at the start of the pandemic. That was a view that was echoed by the head of the NHS in England.
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SIMON STEVENS, CEO, NHS ENGLAND: We are seeing over 800 patients a day admitted to London hospitals with coronavirus. That is the equivalent of a new St. Thomas' Hospital full of COVID patients -- fully staffed -- every day or a new University College Hospital full of coronavirus patients every day.
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DOS SANTOS: So what are authorities trying to do?
Well, they are stepping up their vaccination program, one that has the ambitious target of vaccinating more than 30 million people within a very short space of time by the middle of next month.
To add to their arsenal of vaccines to fight COVID-19, the U.K. on Friday approved a third vaccine, this time made by Moderna, that goes hand in hand with the one that has been approved, made by Oxford University and AstraZeneca and the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine too.
They're now finally going to be asking international travelers to prove that they are COVID-19 negative before arriving in these shores. They will have to have a certificate to be given entry here -- Nina dos Santos, CNN, in London.
(END VIDEOTAPE) VAUSE: Some alarming findings about the virus coming from China, where a study found three-fourths of Wuhan patients who were hospitalized still had symptoms six months on. The most common problems were fatigue and trouble sleeping.
It's more evidence that those who recover could still have long- lasting health implications, including possible anxiety and depression. Scientists worldwide continue to study what they call long COVID symptoms.
Search and rescue teams in Indonesia have recovered human remains from the site of a crashed passenger plane enough to fill 70 body bags. Officials expanded the search area Monday to account for some of the wreckage and the human remains, which had drifted. The jet plunged into the sea on Saturday, 62 people on board. CNN's Selina Wang has more on the grief-stricken families of the victims.
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SELINA WANG, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Indonesian divers scoured the sea floor, searching for plane parts and human remains.
Family members of passengers on the crashed Sriwijaya plane wait in anguish. Awan (ph) lost five family members, including his 8-year-old son.
"He was very cheerful. He never missed prayers. He was the favorite child in our big family. Our big family feels lost now that he's gone."
His son was with Awan's (ph) four-months pregnant cousin and their 2- year-old daughter. They were on holiday.
Before takeoff at the airport, the family filmed this farewell video, the kids jumping with joy. It's a video, Awan says, he can no longer watch. It's too much to bear.
Rescuers say they have retrieved more than a dozen body bags of human remains and children's clothing, this wrecked engine, plane pieces.
Awan (ph) said his wife, who was inseparable with her son, is still in shock.
"When I told my wife, she burst into tears. She wouldn't come out of the house."
His son's last words to him were at the airport waiting lounge. He told his dad it was raining. He told his mom to wait for him, he'd be home soon.
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WANG (voice-over): Amid that heavy rain, four minutes into the flight, the Boeing 737-500 dropped 10,000 feet in less than a minute, according to tracking service Flight Radar 24. Fishermen nearby said they heard an explosion, like a bomb on the water. As families wait, they provide DNA samples to help authorities identify the victims.
This couple is also missing and feared dead. They were flying to attend the husband's father's funeral. The wife's brother told CNN he will need to take care of their children, who are now likely orphans.
Indonesia is a nation of thousands of islands, making air travel critical for its population of nearly 270 million people.
The country has a history of airplane accidents, partly due to aging infrastructure and the aviation industry's rapid expansion.
As search operations continue around the clock, Awan (ph) is still waiting news about the remains, with what little hope he has left -- Selina Wang, CNN, Tokyo.
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VAUSE: A new White House just days away and that could mark the beginning of a second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. The options Congress has in the aftermath of last week's riot in Washington. More of that in a moment.
Also, just on the way out the door, kind of, the Trump administration taking one more swipe at his predecessor's the legacy by souring relations with Cuba. What this might mean for the incoming Biden administration.
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VAUSE: A week after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol and House Democrats were planning to vote to impeachment president Trump for an unprecedented second time. The charge reads inciting insurrection for his speech to supporters before the riots began Wednesday.
The resolution also points to a constitutional ban on anyone who engages in insurrection from holding office. Democratic congressman Ted Lieu introduced the resolution with two other lawmakers.
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REP. TED LIEU (D-CA): January 6th happened without an impeachment, it happened because no one stood up to Donald Trump's big lie and no one stood up to what was happening in the right wing media.
And what resulted was that Donald Trump incited a mob that attacked the Capitol. They were looking to assassinate Speaker Pelosi. They were looking to hang vice president Pence. They were hunting for lawmakers.
And to just pretend this did not happen is unacceptable. The only way we can unify our country is to hold all those accountable who engaged in this attack, including the man who incited it, Donald Trump.
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VAUSE: Here's the timeline: the House expected to vote on Wednesday but the Senate not back in session until January 19th, that's a day before Joe Biden's inauguration.
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As Democrats tried to vote Monday to urge Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and force President Trump out of office, but there was one objection from a Republican. The Democrats will try again in the coming hours.
Franita Tolson is a CNN election law analyst and vice dean of the U.S. Law school. She is with us from Los Angeles.
Good to see you. Thank you for taking the time.
FRANITA TOLSON, CNN ELECTION LAW ANALYST: Thank you.
VAUSE: Do you have any concerns about the legality of how Democrats plan on carrying out the impeachment of Trump? At least, it seems to have been questioned, if the Senate can hold a trial for a president who is no longer in office. What are your concerns?
TOLSON: So I don't have very many concerns about legalities. Impeachment is a political process. So the Senate does not necessarily have to hold a trial right away. The Democrats could wait until the Democratic-led Senate takes -- I'm sorry the Democrats take control of the Senate after January 20. And they could decide to hold this -- a trial then. Or they may wait until Vice President-elect -- I'm sorry, President-elect Joe Biden can get his agenda started and hold a trial later.
So there's no Constitutional choir that a trial be held right away. But you know, it's largely political, so the legality of it is not really in question.
VAUSE: OK, so there's no time limit, I guess, is what you're saying --
TOLSON: Yes.
VAUSE: -- on when that Senate trial could take place.
So Biden can get his first term agenda through as much as he wants, maybe, what, a year or so and then, if needed, they could have a trial then. Is that even realistically possible?
TOLSON: Well, so the politics works both ways. Right? Right now there's momentum. People are angry about what happened last Wednesday. And so the Democrats definitely do not want to delay too much, because then the public loses the appetite for an impeachment trial.
And so I like to think we can walk and chew gun, that the Senate can handle the business of the Biden administration while also conducting a trial, on whether or not the outgoing president has acted in a way that is inconsistent with his office.
HOLMES: Yes. Impeachment seems to be preferred by so many within Congress, especially Democrats, because the possibility, at least, that Trump would be banned from holding office again. Explain how that ban works. It can only happen if he -- once he's been found guilty by the Senate. Is that right?
TOLSON: Yes, so -- so in reality, that's why there's an appetite for it. Because the Republicans are focusing very closely on the fact that President Trump only has a few days left in office, but if he is impeached and then convicted by the Senate, the Senate can pass, by simple majority vote, a provision saying that he's no longer able to hold federal office.
And so that's really the benefit. Because I think it's pretty clear at this point that President Trump is planning to run again in 2024. And so the idea is to head off that by preventing him from being able to run again.
VAUSE: Well, at least he's planning on raising money to run again in 2024.
TOLSON: He has raised money, right.
VAUSE: And will continue to. Jeff Shapiro, who's a former assistant attorney general for the District of Columbia, wrote an opinion piece in "The Wall Street Journal." His argument that Trump actually did not break any of the laws when it comes to incitement, mostly because he did not actually talk specifically about acts of violence.
He concludes with this: "The president's critics want him charged for inflaming the emotions of angry Americans. That alone does not satisfy the elements of any criminal offense. Therefore, his speech is protected by the Constitution that members of Congress are sworn to support and defend."
Firstly, is that a reasonable legal defense? And it seems, at this point, any action taken against the president is driven as you say more by politics than the law.
TOLSON: Well, that's a legal defense, too, if he's indicted for inciting a riot. Right? So there is an argument that perhaps this language does not rise to the level of criminal incitement.
But that's far different than saying that he can't be impeached for that conduct. As I mentioned, impeachment is political. So ultimately, the Senate, in convicting, decides whether or not the president's actions have risen to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor. That's different from a legal proceeding, seeking to bring criminal charges against the president for his speech.
VAUSE: Finally, if this happens, this all plays out as expected, let's just assume that, you know, he is impeached, he does go stand trial before a Democrat-controlled Senate. And he, you know, gets officially removed from office in the sanction (ph). Does that officially make Donald Trump the worst president in U.S. history? TOLSON: I don't know. There are some ones that were pretty bad. I
mean, Andrew Johnson, who basically tried to sabotage Reconstructionist, was pretty bad. James Buchanan, pretty bad, right?
VAUSE: At least as bad.
TOLSON: So we've had some bad ones. Modern history, yes, probably.
VAUSE: Franita, thank you so much for being with us. Franita Tolson there. Thanks for your time.
TOLSON: Take care.
VAUSE: Well, the Trump administration has added Cuba back onto the list of state sponsors of terrorism, once again undoing an Obama-era policy just days before Trump leaves office.
CNN's Patrick Oppmann is in Havana with details.
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PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The Trump administration has placed Cuba back on the list of countries that support state terrorism, potentially complicating President-elect Joe Biden's plans to restart talks with the communist-run island, just days before he takes office.
The State Department on Monday said Cuba deserved to be back on the terror black list for harboring U.S. fugitives, supporting rebel groups in Colombia, and propping up the regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
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Critics say the State Department did not prove any actual support to terror groups and that the decision was politically motivated and could hurt U.S. efforts against international terrorism elsewhere.
While inclusion on the terror list usually triggers a series of economic penalties, it's unclear how damaging that will be for Cuba, a country that already faces a long list of U.S. sanctions.
President-elect Biden has said he wants to reestablish a dialog with Cuba and remove some of the Trump administration sanctions to improve the lives of the Cuban people. And that very likely could mean, beginning the process to once again remove Cuba from this terror list designation.
Patrick Oppmann, CNN, Havana.
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VAUSE: Aid groups and the U.N. have been harshly critical of the U.S. decision to list Yemenis' Houthi movement as a foreign terrorist organization. They say it will hinder relief efforts and make the world's biggest humanitarian crisis even worse. One group calls it "Pure diplomatic vandalism."
The Iran-backed Houthis have been fighting a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen for years. Thousands of Yemeni civilians have died. The country is on the brink of famine.
Still to come, Britain's Prince Charles is partnering with some major businesses to fight climate change, proposing billions of dollars to save Earth's rapidly dwindling biodiversity. The Prince of Wales speaks exclusively with CNN. That's next.
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VAUSE: The Prince of Wales is leading a new effort to try and tackle the climate crisis. This time he's doing it with the support of several major companies.
Prince Charles spoke exclusively with CNN's Richard Quest about his goals and the existential threat of climate change.
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PRINCE CHARLES, PRINCE OF WALES, UNITED KINGDOM: Only now -- and I've been, I'm afraid, at this for rather a long time, certainly 40 years or a little bit more. And it's been what can only be described as an uphill battle, to try and persuade people that you can't go on doing the things we've been doing, ad infinitum, without having a terrible price to pay. And this has been the greatest difficulty.
I've always rather subscribed to the catastrophe theory. Unfortunately, as human beings, we tend to leave everything until it's virtually too late and we're just about to fall over the edge of the cliff.
So it's only literally in the last 18 months or so that I think that the mood has changed. People have become much more concerned, suddenly, about the situation we face.
RICHARD QUEST, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: The difference this time seems to be the call and involvement of business. Now business is not altruistic in an abstract sense.
And you say today about industry and finance and business as only they are able to mobilize the innovation, scale and resources required to transform our global economy.
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Is that the difference, that now the finance industry, the banks, business recognizes the significance?
PRINCE CHARLES: I've always believed that the private sector has, really, the key to the solutions to all this. But at the same time, it needs to be a private-public partnership with civil society.
And for so many years, I've tried, whether it was my rainforest project or the International Sustainability Unit I set up to try and drive for a greater awareness of what is required.
It's now suddenly that there is greater awareness of what is required. But at the same time, there are still, out of the 40,000 listed companies around the world, there are still -- there are still very few who have a proper carbon transition, climate action transition plan in place.
So there's still a huge mountain to climb and a lot more people to convince.
QUEST: The problem we've now got, of course, is the pandemic, which is the most immediate crisis on our doorstep, if not the existential crisis that you referred to with -- with climate change.
But I wonder how much more difficult it is to get people to make concessions and to get people to make the necessary commitments when they are, if you like, tied up with the pandemic. Or do you see them as two sides of the same coin?
PRINCE CHARLES: Planetary health and nature's health is intimately -- intimately linked to our own health. And the more we destroy the natural world around us and the biodiversity on which we depend in its infinite variety, and the more we -- we encourage mass extinctions of species, that we don't always realize that we depend on, as each of us is interconnected with the rest of nature, then we are making ourselves ever more vulnerable to all sorts of diseases and problems.
So this pandemic won't be the last one, if we're not very careful. So that's why it's critical to heal the natural world, as well as ourselves.
And this is why we can't ignore it.
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VAUSE: Well, an eight-time Super Bowl winner is turning down the highest civilian honor in the United States from the president he's called a friend for years.
New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick says he will not accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Donald Trump on Thursday, citing the tragic events at the U.S. Capitol last week.
Belichick says he was flattered for the honor, but above all, he reveres the nation's values of freedom and democracy.
Thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm John Vause. I will be back with more news at the top of the hour. In the meantime, WORLD SPORT is next.
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