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Trump Announces New Legal Team Days Before Impeachment Trial Begins; At Least 9 Top Health NY Health Officials Have Quit or Been Reassigned Recently; Major Snowstorm Disrupts Travel, Shuts Down Vaccination Sites. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired February 01, 2021 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

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BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: A major shake-up to former President Trump's legal team just days before his second impeachment trial is set to begin, and it's all because Trump just can't quit this baseless argument that there was widespread election fraud. Reminder -- there was none of that.

On Saturday, the former president's entire team quit because he wanted to argue that the big lie strategy, the election was stolen, a strategy his attorneys just didn't agree with him. And now leading the defense against the charge of incitement of insurrection, David Schoen. He was on Roger Stone's appeal time. He met with accused sex trafficker Jeffery Epstein days before Epstein's suicide but says he doesn't believe he took his own life.

Also on this team a guy by the name of Bruce Castor Jr., he was the district attorney for Montgomery County Pennsylvania who decided not to prosecute Bill Cosby in 2005. This the team.

With me now, CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams, he is a former deputy assistant attorney general and former federal prosecutor. So, Elliott, we're one week from this trial starting. He's totally switched his legal team. How does the president argue that he did not incite insurrection when he wants to make the very argument of election fraud which led to the Capitol insurrection?

ELLIOTT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Right. I mean look his former lawyers had the good sense to get out, to jump ship and realize that this was a very bad legal representation for him to take on. And moreover it's not just that they had a disagreement, you know, just a simple disagreement among friends.

Making the election fraud argument before the U.S. Senate could have come with serious consequences for their law licenses. Because they would be making arguments to a tribunal to Congress that they knew to be false, that they knew to be true or that had been disproven by dozens and dozens of courts. And any good sensible lawyer had to know and has to know that if you're going down that road you have to be prepared for the consequences.

So we don't know what happened in the closed door -- you know, those the private meetings with President Trump and his lawyers, but we can assume that the attorneys knew just that they were taking themselves at risk --

BALDWIN: When they had a bounce.

WILLIAMS: -- by taking the representation on.

BALDWIN: Yes.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

BALDWIN: There's this -- you know, there are mixed reports about whether or not Trump would actually go to Washington to testify. One can't imagine he would do such a thing, but do you think that that is in the realm of possibility and why?

WILLIAMS: Anything is in the realm of possibilities. We've lived through President Trump the past four years.

BALDWIN: True.

WILLIAMS: He and his lawyers need to ask a question. Does he want a political circus, or does he want to be acquitted? And the simple fact is this is a rare legal proceeding where almost half the jury, the Senators are on the record now saying they are willing to acquit this individual if they just make the constitutional argument that a former sitting president can't be tried and can't face judgment.

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Now look, that argument is wrong or at least if not wrong there's dispute about it among legal scholars. But Senators have signaled that they're willing to suggest -- to accept it. So go with that and stay away from the craziness and conspiracy theories and so on. But the president loves a Jerry McGuire, I can't quit you, with the craziness and that's where we are.

BALDWIN: I don't know if it's Jerry McGuire but --

WILLIAMSON: I don't remember.

BALDWIN: I know what it is. If Trump is acquitted, let's play this forward. If he is acquitted, is there in the realm of possibility some other repercussion that would then prevent him from running for office ever again?

WILLIAMS: No, there's talk. I think Senator Tim Kaine has put out the idea of --

BALDWIN: Censuring.

WILLIAMS: -- censuring the president. The problem is that it doesn't come with a legal penalty. It's merely a statement on behalf of the United States Senate that we disprove as body of --

BALDWIN: Could he write it in, section 3, article 14, if censured cannot run ever, ever.

WILLIAMS: I mean again the question is we've never seen it before like so many other things and it would have to be litigated. That would be a serious constitutional question.

The simple fact is they should have -- they should have just convicted him and had they convicted him there would be a clear path to removing him from office, and now legal scholars in Congress are having to go down the road of these unproven legal theories for the first time ever.

The simple fact is that there was a basis for convicting and removing the president and -- frankly, there was as basis to do it a year ago and Congress, the two houses of Congress failed to do it -- the House did, the Senate didn't.

And here they are again, and it looks like they're going to fail in that duty again. And I don't know if the solution after that failure is to start going down the road of these untested legal theories just, you know, for the sheer thrill I guess of trying to prevent Donald Trump from running for office again.

BALDWIN: A week from tomorrow it begins. Elliott Williams we'll talk again. Thank you.

WILLIAMS: Thank you. Take care.

BALDWIN: Here in New York the Governor Andrew Cuomo is responding to reports that top health officials are quitting amid friction over his response to the pandemic. That's next.

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BALDWIN: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is coming under intense criticism by several current and former state health employees. "The New York Times" today is reporting that at least nine top health officials have resigned as moral has plummeted. And many career employees say local efforts to manage the pandemic have been undermined.

In response, Governor Cuomo told the "Times" quote, if "Times" reporters think I pushed hospitals too hard and local governments too hard, I say I'm a fighter for the people of New York, and I believe I'm saving lives.

David Goodman is one of "The New York Times" reporters who broke this piece today. He covers the economic and health impacts of the pandemic in the state, so, David, welcome.

J. DAVID GOODMAN, REPORTER, NEW YORK TIMES: Thanks for having me. Sure. BALDWIN: You are reporting that nine health officials resigned, but

the governor's office says two of them still work for the state, and at least one official left for other reasons. Do you know if any of them resigned out of frustration specifically because of the governor's handling of the pandemic?

GOODMAN: Well, what we can say is that these nine resignations happened at a time when inside the department senior health officials have told us that there was morale had plummeted to levels that, you know, no one could remember. In the past emergencies had always sort of caused folks inside the health department to rally because they were suddenly called upon to show their expertise.

And in this case, they were sidelined and disrespected by staffers and aides to the governor, they said. And so in that context we had these nine resignations of people that are not just anyone at the health department, but it goes all the way up to the deputy commissioner for public health, the director of their office of communicable disease control, the state epidemiologist.

I mean, these are people that are, you know, in charge of the public health response for the state, and so this was a concerning development that we learned about that hadn't been report elsewhere, and we thought that this was something that, you know, they needed to respond to.

BALDWIN: The other big nugget from your piece, David, is that you reported that had Governor Cuomo designated the Greater New York Hospital Association as this regional vaccine hub. It's a trade group with a multi-million dollar lobbying arm that has actually been a major donor to the governor's causes.

But Governor Cuomo on the flip side, you know, he is defending the move. He says that they had the necessary cold storage capacity safe for the vaccine, that health care workers were the first to be vaccinated. What do you say to that?

GOODMAN: This is one of the things that came out. So the reporting really started with a question. Which was, you know, how did the first month and six weeks of the vaccine rollout go? And if you were in New York at that time you remember that there was real slowness in getting the doses into arms and people are wondering why are certain hospitals slow and what's going on with the rollout? So we started to look into it.

And one thing that the governor did that surprised a lot of state health officials and local health officials was in December to designate these hubs in different regions around the state to be -- to be centered in hospital systems. So you had, you know, a university -- excuse me, a medical system up in Albany do that area. And you had Northwell do Long Island. And you had Greater New York Hospital Association take care of the New York City region.

And that was a departure from the planning that had gone into -- the planning that had been done at the state and local level around pandemic response. There's been, you know, year, of sort of -- plans have been drawn up

and updated each year really in the wake of 9/11 and the bioterrorism threats to say what would we needed to do if we needed to do a mass inoculation effort?

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We needed to get, you know, respond to an anthrax attack which is actually one of the early things that they tested, and they had a way of doing that. And it was sort of using this network of state and local and public health departments. And so it came as a surprise that the hospitals would be running this, and not so much running it but coordinating it at the local level.

And so Greater New York, which has a very good relationship with the governor was tasked with doing New York City and, you know, the aide to the governor say that this pandemic really wiped away all the plans that were there before. And the governor, you know, quoted the Mike Tyson line, that you know, everyone has a plan until I punch them in the face.

And I think that was really the attitude that this pandemic required a different response even if state and local officials were working on plans, you know, in the summer and through the early fall that were different than the ones they ended up with.

BALDWIN: David, I'm listening to you so closely and I'm also wondering, you know, just with all of your reporting what are some of the things that the governor has done right in these months fighting the pandemic that you -- that you truly believe he deserves credit for?

GOODMAN: I mean, I think he deserves credit for setting up the testing. New York state does more testing than any other -- I'm not sure it's more than any other state -- but they do a vast amount of testing and that has really helped, you know, the state stay, especially through the summer months, stay on top of the pandemic.

You know, I think that this, you know, this effort to try and inoculate folks as quickly as possible. You know, the governor has a philosophy and he's shown it in other places as well in terms of when you look at the MTA and the L-train renovations that you go -- you don't always go with the plans that the sort of bureaucrats have come up with. You try and think outside the box, is there another better way to do this?

And I think that what was happening here, and I do think that they felt that this, you know, this hospital-based system was actually a smarter more efficient way to do it. But it did result in sort of discord inside the department, and a lot of instances in which folks at the health department were finding out about various rules around, you know, what was going to be happening with regard to the pandemic response in realtime at press conferences. Which is not necessary the way we think government works in the state.

BALDWIN: David Goodman, thanks so much. Asking the big questions. Appreciate you on what's happening with New York and Governor Cuomo.

GOODMAN: Thank you.

BALDWIN: A massive winter storm is slamming the East Coast. We have the latest from the CNN Weather Center next.

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BALDWIN: This year's first major snowstorm is sweeping from the Midwest to all the way up through the Northeast, it is already disrupting travel, blanketing roads, forcing the cancellation of thousands of flights.

And during the pandemic the storm is stopping efforts for Americans to get vaccinated. New Jersey's governor closed all six of its COVID-19 vaccine mega sites ahead of the storm's arrival along with state offices and New Jersey Transit.

New York's mayor says the storm is disrupting vaccination efforts there. He has canceled vaccinations for today and tomorrow, saying that appointments can be rescheduled. And in Washington, as much as three inches has already fallen. Sleet and snow mix is covering the roads with ice. That city could see up to five inches, the most it has had in the last two years.

And here's an update moments ago, we just heard about Amtrak announcing its suspended service from New York City to Boston and Albany, New York.

So with me now, CNN meteorologist Tom Seder. And Tom, it's a lot of snow, in a lot of places. Who gets the worst of it? What are the biggest concerns?

TOM SEDER, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, there's a lot of concerns right now, still, Brooke. The storm is still developing. I mean, it's still intensifying. It's a massive storm. In fact it's pretty. I'm sure it's beautiful up there where you are. But it's always beautiful until someone loses power and then that beauty vanishes.

So far, so good on that front. Take a look at the radar. This is such a massive storm. I mean if you start at the edge of your screen to the left, Chicago, ten and half inches, that's greatest snow in six years, Milwaukee got a foot.

We had snow, and I did here, in North Georgia. The winds right now are howling here. So a massive storm still wrap-around snow parts of Columbus, Cleveland, even in Detroit. Washington, D.C. had their heaviest snow fall in two years. They could see a dusting to an inch.

But this is where it gets dangerous now. Well over a foot of snow for several states. Areas of Maryland and West Virginia and Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, up into Connecticut. And it's still going to come down. In fact, even into tonight just blinding conditions. And we've had some blizzard conditions with winds already, coastal New

Jersey, Long Island, coastal Connecticut at 50 miles per hour. And you could see this area of red, even in purple around New York City, this is where we're really going to see critical problems when it comes to just travel, either by road or by air. You're going to have problems. Of course, when it comes to water if you live on the coastline.

More on that in a minute. Take a look at these totals still to come. Boston, you're going to get 6 to 12. We'll get in closer and look at this.

But you've got to look at New York City. Records go back, Brooke, 150 years. This could easily crack the top ten, possibly the top five. And when you look at the snow totals even inland, up to two feet or more. Now here's the problem with the flooding. Coastal flooding has been occurring, coastal Jersey up into areas of New York.

The Battery Park could see highest water levels that they've seen since super storm Sandy. If it gets to around high tide tonight at midnight, we're talking 8.4 feet, 8.5 will put it over the sea wall and flood the boardwalk.

So again this storm is still cranking up, it's going to be a long haul, temperatures will be cold enough to keep the snow on the ground for a while.

But again it really says something when you look at 150 years' worth of records and we could get close to the top five snowfalls for New York City. Hang in there, we may have another one down the pipe here as we get into next weekend. But a little too far for that one just yet.

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BALDWIN: Hanging in. Have a huge, you know, window in my office, just been sitting in my snow boots all day, just staring out at -- it's just totally white. It's extraordinary how thick and how fast it's coming down for many more hours to come. Tom Seder, thank you. We'll be tuned in.

I want to pivot to this. Breaking coverage continues on the future of the COVID relief plan. President Biden preparing to meet with ten Republican Senators who are pushing a much smaller rescue package. Those details ahead.

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