Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Senators to be Sworn in Today for Trump's Second Impeachment Trial; Biden to Sign Executive Orders Related to Equity; Travelers to the U.S. Now Need Negative Test Prior to Departure; U.S. Detects First Case of Variant Identified in Brazil; Senators To Be Sworn in for Trump's Second Impeachment Trial Today; Sources: Chief Justice Roberts will not Preside Over Trump's Second Impeachment Trial; Biden Hoping U.S. will Soon Be Able to Administer 1.5 Million Vaccines Per Day. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired January 26, 2021 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A very good Tuesday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Poppy Harlow.

President Biden tells CNN the impeachment trial, quote, has to happen. And one hour from now, the process is happening. It is moving forward. The Senate will convene at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time and later senators will be sworn in today as jurors in this stunning second impeachment trial of former President Trump.

SCIUTTO: Amazing to see this just in the span of 13-some odd months. But Biden also told CNN he does not think that 17 Republican senators will vote to convict to reach two-thirds.

We are following all the developments from Capitol Hill to the coronavirus, include something good news on the coronavirus.

[09:00:05]

But, first, let's begin with Lauren Fox on Capitol Hill.

Tell us how the date plays out and the days leading up to the trial play out.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, essentially we have about two weeks until a trial will actually begin. But you can expect some of those formalities, some of the ceremonial pieces beginning today. And at 2:00, 2:15 precisely we expect that senators will be sworn in as jurors and presiding over that whole process is going to the president pro tem, Senator Patrick Leahy.

Of course that's different than when you had the Chief Justice John Roberts presiding last year over the trial. That is in part because Roberts has viewed the need to have him there as not essential given the fact that this is now a former president who is going to be going through the impeachment trial.

Look, we still expect that there are going to be discussions happening about whether or not there will be witnesses as part of this trial, how long this trial is going to go. We also know now, my colleagues Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb, reporting out that we expect that they could use video, the House impeachment managers could use video as part of their presentation of evidence. That's not so different than what we saw, just like you said, a little bit over a year ago now in the Senate impeachment trial last time around.

But, obviously, this is a historic moment. The is the first time that you are going to have a president who is impeached, not once, but twice. And this is the only the fourth impeachment trial in American history of a U.S. president. So plenty to look forward to, but impeachment is going to move to the back burner for a couple of weeks as we expect that those negotiations and discussions about how to move forward with this trial will unfold behind closed doors -- Jim and Poppy.

HARLOW: Well, Lauren, at least now the Senate has figured out how to work. I won't go as far as saying work together but work in a power- sharing agreement. What I thought was interesting is that both Schumer and McConnell sort of claimed victory here.

FOX: Well, that's exactly right. What you saw yesterday was you had two Democratic senators Kyrsten Sinema and Senator Joe Manchin both saying that they had no plans to vote to blow up the filibuster any time soon. And those aren't different positions than they've had for many, many months and even years at this point. But it was enough to unlock the stalemate of this agreement.

Essentially what you had behind the scenes was McConnell arguing that he wanted something in writing saying that they were not going to blow up the filibuster. Democrats, of course, didn't want to make that commitment in part because they don't know how much obstruction or how many roadblocks Republicans might put up in the next few days and months as they try to move forward with President Joe Biden's agenda.

So everybody claiming victory this morning. I will tell you not much really has changed. It's just we expect that this will get a vote at some point in the near future -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Politics at its finest. Lauren Fox, thank you.

Now to Jeremy Diamond with more on Biden's agenda today.

SCIUTTO: And a lot of it with a pen.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: The president set to sign several more executive orders today. What is he focusing on?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right. We've seen this White House talk about bipartisan legislation which hasn't happened yet, of course, given that they've been in office for less than a week but what we are seeing is President Biden moving once again to use his executive authority to promote some of his agenda. We saw a focus on coronavirus, on the economy.

Today we are seeing a focus on racial equity with several executive actions aimed at police reform, prison reform and also equitable policies in housing. Let me take you through just a few of these that we know of so far. The president is expected to sign one executive order to create a policing commission. This was one of his promises during the 2020 campaign was to create this commission to review policing procedures across the country.

Also barring the transfer of military equipment to police departments. That was an Obama administration policy which President Trump had revoked. And then you'll also see some actions to improve conditions in prisons, take steps to begin ending private prisons in this country and also promoting equitable policies in housing.

It is notable to see President Biden focusing on this. Of course he talked about this a lot during the 2020 campaign. But over the last year we have had a president who has made all these discussions about policing and racism in the United States. Essentially ignored that conversation or chosen to focus on other aspects of it like the reaction, like some of the protests, some of the rioting that we saw in the country.

But now we are seeing a president of the United States actually engaging in this conversation about racism in the United States and specifically as it relates to policing in this country. We've also seen, of course, that equity has been at the center of his coronavirus policy. It's one of the seven goals that he laid out in his national strategy last week.

HARLOW: Yes, and the numbers from the new CNN analysis this morning really show the inequity when it comes to vaccine distribution right now in the middle of all of this.

Before you go, Jeremy, you've got a lot, I think dozens, of administration members today. They're going to get their first dose of the COVID vaccine? Any big names on the list?

[09:05:03]

DIAMOND: Yes. We don't have names specifically but we do know that there will be dozens of members of both the West Wing staff, which is, you know, right around the Oval Office, the staff that sees the president multiple times a day or every day at least. And then you also have the National Security Council staff.

This is important because as President Biden's administration came in, they enforced some stricter coronavirus policies here at the White House and in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building across the street. Essentially promoting more teleworking. So a lot of officials have been working from home, including those National Security Council officials, many of whom need classified information, access to classified information to do their jobs.

So by getting vaccinated, hopefully they will be able to return to actually work here rather than teleworking which makes their jobs a little bit more difficult -- Jim, Poppy.

SCIUTTO: Well, a lot of us, I'm sure, and those watching can identify with that.

Jeremy Diamond, thanks very much.

We're learning now that President Biden will speak today on his administration's response to COVID-19. This as several of his actions on coronavirus take effect today. A new COVID rule will go into effect for passengers entering the U.S. from abroad. International travelers now need a negative test within three days of their travel date.

It's interesting. It's a step that countries such as China, for instance, have had in place for a number of months now.

HARLOW: Yes. Pete Muntean is at Washington Dulles International Airport this morning.

And Pete, you know, one of the headlines I saw this morning, I think about my home state a lot, Minnesota, that new strain they believe was brought in by a traveler from Brazil. So something like this would ostensibly stop that from happening, right?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: That's exactly right, Poppy. You know, this is where international travelers arrive here in the United States after they clear customed here at Dulles. But it's well before they get here that these new restrictions are taking effect.

Now all international travelers coming into the United States will have to show proof of a negative coronavirus test to their airline before they leave for the U.S. They have to take that test within 72 hours of their flight.

You know, it's really politics driving the policy here. The Biden administration is also further restricting travel for non-U.S. citizens coming from the U.K., much of Europe, Brazil, as you mentioned, and now South Africa where that new coronavirus strain is also a concern.

It's these types of restrictions that the Trump administration wanted to do away with, and the White House says now is not the time to relax any of this. The State Department issuing a new warning to any international traveler saying they should not go abroad and Dr. Anthony Fauci says all of this shows the seriousness that the new administration is tackling this pandemic.

HARLOW: Pete Muntean, thank you very, very much for that reporting. It should make -- let's see if it makes a big difference.

Let's talk a little bit more about this new variant or variants detected in the United States. Health officials say they are extremely worried about it. In fact, the CDC is closely monitoring four new COVID-19 variants.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Now this is happening as we're seeing the number of new infections come down.

HARLOW: Right.

SCIUTTO: Hospitalizations come down. Let's bring in CNN's senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.

So, Elizabeth, we're seeing new variants from Brazil, South Africa, U.K. The concern of course is that they're more transmissible. More cases. It is happening, though, at the same time that we're seeing the number of new infections come down. How do you square that circle?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know what, it is really hard for us to parse all of that out because it may be that overall, cases might be going down but that these variants are causing more spread or it may be that the variants aren't really here in big numbers. It's very difficult to tell especially because the surveillance system in this country isn't great. We often don't catch a lot of these variants.

Let's talk about sort of the three categories of concerns. And I am hearing this sort of across the board from folks on President Biden's transition team from just before he became president to all sorts of folks. That these are the three concerns. The three questions that we need to have answered. Are these variants more transmissible? I think it's clear for the South African and U.K. variants that those are indeed -- do appear to be more transmissible. But even that's not entirely known.

Do these variants have a higher death rate? Will they make you sicker and be more likely to kill you because there's just something about them, they're more virulent? That is unknown. There is some data that says that that is true for the variant first spotted in the U.K., but even that we're not completely sure.

Also the third concern, could these variants evade the vaccine? This is such an amazing vaccine. 95 percent effective for Pfizer and Moderna. Could the variants kind of mess that up? There is some data in the lab that shows that the South African variant may make the vaccine a bit, possibly a bit less effective. Maybe not 95 percent. Maybe 90 percent, 85 percent, 80 percent. Something in that neighborhood. Of course that would still be incredibly effective.

But those are three things that CDC and others are looking for. I am told that the CDC is in contact with scientists in the U.K. to go through their data -- Poppy, Jim.

[09:10:09]

HARLOW: Well, yes. I mean, the fact that the CDC just said in the last few minutes 24 states now have almost 300 cases in total of this U.K. variant. It seems like it's -- I mean, we're past the point of containing this, Elizabeth.

In terms of vaccines, J&J, Johnson & Johnson's vaccine pretty soon likely to become the third one available in this country?

COHEN: That's right. So what we're hearing is that we could see phase three clinical trial results from them next week. They were speaking with CNN's Richard Quest about that earlier this morning. Now we don't know if that's going to be the whole report or just interim results. What we do know is that Dr. Anthony Fauci said recently that he thinks their application to the FDA for emergency use authorization is, quote, "right around the corner."

Now unclear what that means but at this stage when Moderna and Pfizer were starting to put out their phase threes, they were weeks away from applying for an EUA and then of course it takes a few weeks more after that. So nothing super soon.

HARLOW: OK.

SCIUTTO: Well, it's good news to have more options. Right? Hopefully that can address some of the supply issues.

COHEN: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Out there. Elizabeth Cohen, thanks very much.

Other breaking news we're following this morning, at least one person is dead, nearly 30 others injured after a powerful tornado ripped through Birmingham, Alabama, and the area around overnight. Search and rescue operations still under way there. Look at those pictures from the air. Just stunning video coming out this morning. You are looking at a hotel there destroyed by the storm. Thankfully officials say the residents at that Hampton Inn were able to escape in time.

HARLOW: Wow. Well, still to come, senators are sworn in today as jurors in the second impeachment trial of former President Trump. What is his legal defense strategy? Who will his lawyers be? That's next.

Plus, the Biden administration ups its goal now targeting 1.5 million COVID vaccinations per day. We'll talk to someone who understands still the serious challenges the states have ahead.

SCIUTTO: And one of the many questions remaining from Donald Trump's presidency, will we ever -- will the American public see his tax returns? The Supreme Court could take up an issue directly related to that as early as today. We'll have the latest just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

HARLOW: Hours from now, U.S. senators will be formally sworn in as jurors for former President Trump's second impeachment trial. Though the trial will not get fully under way for about two more weeks.

SCIUTTO: Well, those two weeks are key for the current president as he gets forward on his agenda, but also the former president who is beginning to craft a defense strategy with the one lawyer he's been able to hire at this point, a South Carolina lawyer named Butch Bowers.

He is struggling to find other lawyers to join his legal team. Joining us now to discuss how the trial will play out, Julian Epstein, he was chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during President Clinton's impeachment. And Ross Garber, he teaches political investigations and impeachment law at Tulane Law School. Thanks to both of you this morning, good to have you on, your experience.

Julian, I wonder if I could begin with you because it's still an open question as to whether the house impeachment managers will call witnesses. I just wonder how that's possible. How do you do this without witnesses, right? I mean, one, on the insurrection, right itself, but also on the president's other efforts to overturn the election, especially given Democrats upset at not being able to allow -- not being allowed to call the witnesses they wanted in the last impeachment trial.

JULIAN EPSTEIN, FORMER CHIEF COUNSEL FOR HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE DURING CLINTON'S IMPEACHMENT: I think they will call witnesses, and I think they should be able to call witnesses. I mean, one of the -- you know, one of the arguments that people have made is that you don't need witnesses because the crime took place on the steps of the Capitol and inside the actual building. And that the members of Congress were the victims of this crime.

I think that's true, but I think to the extent that there's a lot of other information. There's information about sort of how much the president knew beforehand that the people coming to the January 6th rally had violent intent, and there's considerable evidence of that if you look at sort of the online traffic.

The White House's delay in calling federal law enforcement and the National Guard out, congressional Democrats will now have access to all that information now that the White House has changed. I think there's an enormous amount of information about the president's illegal efforts to overturn the election in Georgia and elsewhere.

So, I think they will have access to -- much more information they would than if the Republicans were in control of the Senate. And I think they will be able to access that information, they'll be able to subpoena information from the executive branch and they'll be able to call witnesses. And I think they should if they want to conduct a proper trial.

HARLOW: Ross, explain the significance or how significant you think it is or is not that the Chief Justice will not preside over this trial, and the fact that Democratic Senator Leahy will. And if that complicates at all his ability to vote, to be a juror.

ROSS GARBER, VISITING PROFESSOR, TULANE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW: Yes, so, you know, under the constitution, the Chief Justice presides when the president is on trial. And now, you know, Donald Trump is not the president, and so it actually makes sense that it wouldn't be the Chief Justice. Now, it may be that former President Trump's lawyers will argue, well, you know what? That's sort of an indication of why this whole thing is improper, why

there's no jurisdiction because Donald Trump is not the president anymore. But it makes sense that Senator Leahy is going to preside, and he can vote. And I --

HARLOW: OK --

GARBER: This is not -- you know, as we saw in the last impeachment trial, the presiding officer doesn't act as the judge. It's very different. The presiding officer is the same as the presiding officer normally in the Senate, has limited powers.

[09:20:00]

SCIUTTO: OK, Julian, so the two questions that will come before the Senate, one, whether to convict or not to convict. And if they do convict, then they'll have a second vote to bar Trump from serving in federal office or running again. Of course, they have to meet, as I understand it, he has to be convicted first before you get to that simple majority vote. But if you were to get to that point, Julian Epstein, is that settled law that, that would hold? That it would -- that it would clearly bar President Trump from running for president again?

EPSTEIN: I think it's relatively clear in the text of the constitution. I think that, you know, there are several provisions in the constitution and certainly one of the provisions of the constitution says that it should not, in cases of impeachment, the -- a conviction shall not extend further than removal from office and disqualification.

So I think it's sort of relatively clear that the Senate would take a separate vote and would only have to have a majority vote in order to bar President Trump from running again. It is important to note there are provisions -- other provisions in the constitution like the 14th Amendment --

HARLOW: Right --

EPSTEIN: Which it looks like -- with which it looks like pretty certainly that Congress could bar President Trump from running for federal office as well.

HARLOW: Without an impeachment conviction?

EPSTEIN: Without an impeachment conviction.

HARLOW: All right. And I think they'd only need 51 votes to do it, but --

EPSTEIN: Fifty one votes, that's correct.

HARLOW: Maybe we're getting a little ahead of ourselves, but I mean, that is how it could play out. Ross, it really -- all indications show that the argument from the president's legal team is going to be a process argument. It's going to say you don't have jurisdiction here, he's not in office. You know, where is the injury, et cetera, you don't have standing, right? Is that -- is that wise? Is it stronger than a free speech argument?

GARBER: I think we're going to see both. I think we're for sure going to see this argument that you can't try and convict a former president. We're definitely going to see that. And we're going to -- you know, all become experts in constitutional law and history.

We're going to hear a lot about this William Belknap case, Ulysses S. Grant; former Secretary of War where the Senate actually decided, nope, you can't try a former official, but then they went on to acquit him and most of those who voted for acquittal said that the reason was that they didn't think that there was jurisdiction. So, we're going to hear a lot about that.

The second thing we are going to hear though is that, you know, what he said was sort of protected by free speech and we're going to become experts on this case, Brandenburg versus Ohio where the Supreme Court worked to distinguish protected free speech on the one hand, which might have bellicose language, and on the other hand, speech that's actually intended, directed to produce some sort of imminent violence.

And I think we're going to hear from the president's lawyers that that's not what he was doing. He was engaging in protected free speech and he didn't actually intend for the raid on the Capitol to happen now.

SCIUTTO: Yes, intent a lot harder to prove. Julian Epstein, Ross Garber, I'm sure we'll have more questions for you in the coming days and weeks. Thanks very much. Well, President Biden is now looking to vaccinate 1.5 million Americans per day, upping his goal. Coming up, how he plans to meet that goal.

HARLOW: Also keeping an eye on the markets this morning. We are moments away from the opening bell. Futures relatively flat this morning, pointing a little bit higher after the brief market dip yesterday. Some big names out with their corporate earnings today, could give investors an idea of which companies are struggling amid the pandemic, which are thriving. We'll hear from Starbucks rising and Microsoft all a little bit later today, we'll stay on top of it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:25:00]

SCIUTTO: Well, President Biden is raising the bar for his goal of vaccinations in the U.S. The president says he hopes the country will soon be able to administer 1.5 million shots a day, up from a million shots a day. Therefore, raising a goal of 150 million vaccinations in his first 100 days in office.

HARLOW: Kristen Holmes joins us now. Good morning Kristen. It's good, you know, if we can hit that number for sure. There are a lot of sort of basic questions, though, like how many doses are available, and also I mean, there are some experts who are saying that goal is still too low. We should be talking about 2 million doses a day. KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy and

Jim. Well, that's right. And just on that question of supply, this is across the board. We know the Biden administration themselves, they're saying they don't know what the current supply is. So, it's really unclear where this 1.5 million shots a day actually came from. And the White House seemed to backpedal a little bit.

An official telling CNN after the president spoke that the goal was still 100 million shots in 100 days. Again, so unclear where this 1.5 number came from. Now one thing to keep in mind, all of this is happening as there was the Biden administration really facing a little bit of heat here. Experts had said as you just noted that the vaccine distribution plan was already on track to likely reach this million doses a day and probably even higher than that.

Now this official telling CNN that they still want to stick with that 100 million shots in the first 100 days, and that, that itself is an ambitious but achievable goal.