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President Biden Proclaims America is Back, Democracy is Back as He Announces Major Foreign Policy Shifts; Alexei Navalny Appears at Hearing on Defamation Charge; Johnson & Johnson Asks FDA to Authorize Its One-Dose Vaccine; France Avoided Third Partial Lockdown; One-On- One Interview with Oksana Pyzik; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Ousted from Committees; U.S. House Ousts Rep. Greene From Committee Assignments; Adviser: Trump Won't Testify At Senate Trial; Myanmar Coup: Protestors Hope To Drive Out Military Junta; WHO Team Visits Wuhan Lab. Aired 2-2:45a ET

Aired February 05, 2021 - 02:00   ET

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

[02:00:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR (on camera): Coming up, a message to the world from the U.S. president. Trump is gone, normal is back, can we still be friends? Reaction to his foreign policy speech is coming up.

Also, the U.S. House votes to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from committees for spewing conspiracy theories and calls for violence.

Only 11 Republicans voted with Democrats, leaving 199 others who are OK with all the hate and the crazy.

Plus, any moment now, Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is expected in court again. This time, a libel charge. We will have a live report from the courthouse.

That is all ahead on this hour of "CNN Newsroom."

Hello, everyone. I'm John Vause. Great to have you with us. Well, move over America first, make way for diplomacy is back. Joe Biden is calling the shots now. When it comes to U.S. foreign policy, he is determined to reverse course on Donald Trump's legacy of broken alliances and damaged credibility.

CNN's Phil Mattingly reports now from the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: America is back. America is back. Diplomacy is back.

(APPLAUSE)

President joe biden, laying out the central organizing principles of his foreign policy. PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN U.S. CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over):

President Joe Biden laying out the central organizing principles of his foreign policy.

BIDEN: We will compete from a position of strength by building back better at home, working with our allies and partners, renewing our role in international institutions, and reclaiming our credibility and moral authority.

MATTINGLY (voice-over): The president's first visit to the State Department, underscoring a stark shift from his predecessor.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I will always put America first.

MATTINGLY (voice-over): Biden laying out an indictment of the Trump administration's work across the globe, signalling a new approach on Russia.

BIDEN: The days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia's aggressive actions, interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens, are over. We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interest and our people.

MATTINGLY (voice-over): Aligning with allies to push back on the imprisonment of Alexei Navalny.

BIDEN: He has been targeted, targeted for exposing corruption. He should be released immediately and without condition.

MATTINGLY (voice-over): With Biden providing glimpses of the administration stance on China, pushing strength.

BIDEN: We will confront China's economic abuses, counter its aggressive, coercive action, to push back on China's attack on human rights, intellectual property, and global governance.

MATTINGLY: But with a willingness to talk.

BIDEN: But we are ready to work with Beijing, when it is in America's interest to do so.

MATTINGLY (voice-over): And on the press.

BIDEN: We believe a free press isn't an adversary. Rather, it is essential.

MATTINGLY: Biden moving to end U.S. support for offensive actions in Yemen, while halting the drawdown of U.S. troops in Germany amid a global force posture review, and signing an executive order to boost refugee numbers, even acknowledged the dramatically reduced levels will take time to rebuild.

BIDEN: It's going to take time to rebuild, what has been so badly damaged, but that's precisely what we are going to do. MATTINGLY (voice-over): All serving as a baseline for a dramatic shift in U.S. posture.

BIDEN: We've taken steps to acknowledge and address systemic racism and the scourge of white supremacy in our own country.

MATTINGLY (voice-over): As the U.S. grapples with its own deep divides.

BIDEN: Many of these values have come under intense pressure in recent years. It's even pushed to the brink in the last few weeks. The American people are going to emerge from this moment stronger, more determined, and better equipped to unite the world in fighting to defend democracy, because we have fought for it ourselves.

MATTINGLY (voice-over): Phil Mattingly, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

VAUSE (on camera): Well, for more, CNN's Steven Jiang is live in Beijing, also Sam Kiley, standing by for us in Jerusalem.

But Steven, I will start with you. After four years of an erratic, unpredictable president, Joe Biden represents a return to almost business as usual approach. And does that, it seemed, include the response from Beijing to all of this?

STEVEN JIANG, CNN SENIOR PRODUCER: You know, there are none to be surprised by what Joe Biden -- what Joe Biden said in that speech.

[02:05:00]

JIANG: Even though he only spoke of China generally, a lot of the overall themes actually are aimed at Beijing, as well. You know, you heard him say the need to counter advancing authoritarianism with the help of U.S. allies and partners, and also the focus on values, letting engagement.

Already you see some of this being reflected in Biden's policy moves. The U.S., for example, sent a warship to Taiwan Strait just early this week. Also, it looks like the Biden administration is going to keep the genocide destination on China's policy, in the Muslim region of Xinjiang. So, increasingly, you see this continuity emerging in Washington in terms of how to deal with an increasingly powerful and aggressive China.

So the key question is how is Beijing going respond? It seems they are going to -- it looks like they are going to stick to their hardline positions and policies, expanding or even normalizing their so called wolf warrior diplomacy against the U.S. and around the world.

A latest sign in that came from a speech by Chinese leader Xi Jinping's top foreign policy aide. Yang Jiechi told an American audience just a few days ago that the reason this relationship plunged to its lowest point in decades was because of a misguided strategies and policies from Washington, especially from the Trump White House. So, his underlying message was if the Biden White House wants to see this relationship bounce back, they have to correct Trump's mistake.

So, you know, for a party, the Chinese Communist Party, the self- criticism sessions, they seemed -- they are certainly not doing a lot of that when it comes to its foreign policy and U.S. policy. John?

VAUSE: Steven, thank you. Steven Jiang, live for us in Beijing. Sam, to you now, (INAUDIBLE) of this foreign policy address, it was directed at the Saudis and the war in Yemen. A real action, which the Saudis, I imagine, will not be pleased about.

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The Saudis are going to be very threatened. They may have believed that they might excuse the pun, dodge this bullet, at least temporarily, given the flagging that the Biden campaign had said that, all along, the United States in a Biden presidency would re-examine the relationship with Saudi Arabia, when it particularly came to the war in Yemen.

So, we've heard now from the U.S. president that immediately, the United States is stopping all arms supplies to Saudi Arabia that are likely to be used in the war in Yemen. Just a week or so ago, they also suspended, pending review, the sale of 50 F-35s to the United Arab Emirates, also a form of belligerence in the Yemen locals.

The emirates have pulled out. The Saudis continue their campaign. Interestingly, the Saudis have not responded, John, with anger. They have welcomed the Biden administration, Joe Biden statement that the United States will be strongly supporting U.N. efforts to bring about what he called an imposed United Nations, end to the civil war, at least a ceasefire in the civil war, and support for the political process is there.

Also, Saudis pointing out that they are the biggest donors to the humanitarian efforts in the United Nations. This will come as a welcome sign, I think, from the Saudis that they are not going to kind of walk off (INAUDIBLE). But they have in the past, recent past, redirected a lot of that funding away from the United Nations into bilateral aid.

So, I think really what we are seeing here from the Biden administration is a sense that enough is enough in the war in Yemen and certainly bowing to pressure that it has been bilateral in the House for some years now that the United States should end its supply of weapons to the Saudis if they are going to be used in Yemen. That is clear that President Biden is now stopping with the media. John?

VAUSE (on camera): Sam, thank you. Sam Kiley there with some regional reaction from Jerusalem. Thank you.

Earlier, I spoke with CNN global affairs analyst and Washington Post columnist Max Boot. I asked him how President Biden can actually repair the damage done to the U.S. alliances by the former president, Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAX BOOT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: He said that trust has to be earned. In fact, the relationships have to be repaired because he understands that the damage that Trump has done to American standing in the world and to American alliances not also going to evaporate simply because Trump is out of office.

That damage will linger because people around the world are still going to be asking themselves, can they trust America or is Trump's America the real America, therefore, should they be worried about the future?

And so, you know, I think Biden understands what a massive job he has in assuring the world that America is, once again, interested in multilateralism and in tackling transnational issues like global warming and the coronavirus. But I think he certainly said the right things and set the right tone in this message to the State Department.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[02:10:05]

VAUSE (on camera): President Biden had praised the Russia's decision to extend the New START nuclear treaty, but there was criticism, as well, for the treatment of Putin critic Alexei Navalny and a demand to his immediate release from prison.

This hour, Alexei Navalny is expected at a court hearing in Moscow, facing charges of defaming a World War II veteran. Navalny was sentenced for three years behind bars on Tuesday, accused of violating parole while he was in Germany, recovering from being poisoned with a military grade nerve agent. Navalny blames the Kremlin for his poisoning. He says the charges against him were politically-motivated.

Fred Pleitgen is outside the courthouse in Moscow this hour. Fred, how is it compared to earlier this week in terms of supporters, protesters, and police?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's completely different, John, than what we saw earlier this week on Tuesday when Alexei Navalny was there in court where he suspended jail sentence, which of course turned into a real jail sentence of at least two and a half years.

Today, there are no supporters of Alexei Navalny here. Also, the whole security posture around the court is actually a lot lower than we saw on Tuesday simply because Alexei Navalny's supporters have not called for anyone to come out here and to protest today.

They have also, by the way, not called for any protest to happen here in Moscow or any other city in Russia over the entire weekend, as well. Their reasoning for that seems to be that they are gearing up for later this year, around the Duma election, which happen in September, and they say they want to start their political action at that point in time.

Again, of course, they have also seen a lot of attrition with a lot of people who are very senior in Alexei Navalny's organization being detained, being arrested over the past couple of weeks. What is going on right now is that Alexei Navalny is already inside the courtroom. That hearing is underway. And as you correctly said, John, this is a defamation hearing for him, essentially or allegedly defaming a World War II veteran in a comment he made about a video that praise amendments to the Russian constitution that Vladimir Putin pushed through last year.

Alexei Navalny calling some people there political hacks (INAUDIBLE) World War II veteran. That can be a crime here in Russia. He could face a fine, a very large fine. He also could face a community service. The law for that was actually changed here in Russia. Now, you can actually get two years in prison, but Alexei Navalny allegedly committed this before that law was changed.

So, we are expecting that he will probably get that fine. It is one of the times that he is going to be in court here. Again, as we can see, the Russian sort of judicial apparatus continuing their full court press against Alexei Navalny, court hearing happened on Tuesday, court hearing again today. So certainly, the pressure is full-on on Alexei Navalny. John?

VAUSE: Just explain the timing here on that charge and how the law was changed. When did it go from just being a fine to being a fine and as well as potential jail time?

PLEITGEN: Yeah. That was at the end of last year when that was changed. The comments that were made by Alexei Navalny, they were made in the middle of last year, and then the law was changed at the end of last year, to that being up to possible two years in prison.

Of course, anything can happen in court, especially from what we've seen over the past week, we have seen over the past couple of days. Obviously, Alexei Navalny is saying that the last trial against him was politically- motivated. He obviously believes that this one is politically-motivated, as well.

But right now, we are still expecting him to face that fine. But, of course, we will have to wait and see what happens at this hearing, John.

VAUSE: That timing, wow, quite the coincidence. Fred, thank you. Fred Pleitgen is in Moscow. I appreciate it.

Well, the U.S. could have a third coronavirus vaccine in the coming weeks that is said to be less effective than the others but it does two things very well. More from an expert in a moment.

Will Donald Trump return to Capitol Hill next week to testify at his impeachment trial? No. His team says no, but democrats said that they have more to play.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[02:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) VAUSE (on camera): The U.S. could soon have a third coronavirus vaccine. Johnson & Johnson applied for emergency use authorization on Thursday. The Food and Drug Administration's advisory committee will hold a committee meeting on the vaccine in three weeks.

The J&J candidate was showing to be 30 percent less effective at preventing symptoms compared with the other two already approved vaccines, but it requires only one dose, and the White House medical adviser says it will still save lives.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: In the critical area of keeping people out of the hospital and making sure they don't die, it did very, very well. So we now will have, if the FDA gives it in the U.A., they put in their application for that, we will know in a few weeks whether or not it's going to happen, that if in fact it does, that will be yet again another good vaccine in the armament area of our tools to fight this pandemic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE (on camera): Meantime, the number of confirmed cases and hospital admissions are declining in the United States. But these encouraging signs come as health officials warn that the new more transmissible variants of the coronavirus could squander those gains which have been made.

Influential forecasting model predicts the virus will have claimed more than 630,000 American lives by June, meaning about another 190,000 deaths between now and then. Researchers say a lot depends on the vaccine rollout and the spread of those variants.

Meanwhile, the growing number of European countries are advising anyone, 65 and older, to avoid the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. Denmark, Sweden, Norway are the latest to say there is just not enough data to recommend usage for the elderly.

In U.K., COVID cases are slowly decreasing, but with the threat of new variants, the government has announced mandatory hotel quarantine for travellers arriving from coronavirus hot spots. They will be required to isolate for 10 days starting on February 15th.

Melissa Bell is tracking all these developments live from Paris. In France, Melissa, the president is saying the situation is fairly fragile, but at this point, there is no need for lockdown.

MELISSA BELL, CNN PARIS CORRESPONDENT: That is right. It is something we have been waiting for these last few days, John. It had seemed inevitable for a while that France would have a third partial lockdown.

In fact, we are hearing now that authorities believe that although the figures are high, about on average 20,000 new cases a day which is pretty high over the course of the last year, that that is high but stable and that therefore they are going to carry on with the system that they have in place.

It is very simple calculation. If you look, John, at the cost of the current curfew system that we have in France, it is just over seven billion Euros. It would be 18 billion Euros a month, if they were to introduce a third partial lockdown. So, that is the reason behind pushing it back. And for the time being, they think that the situation has stabilized.

But as you say, it remains fragile, and this is even as the vaccination program here in Europe remained painfully slow. John?

VAUSE: Melissa, thank you. Melissa Bell there in Paris with the very latest. Thank you.

Let's go now to Oksana Pyzik, global health expert at the University College of London, my apology for the pronunciation of your last name, if I got that right. Thanks for being with us.

OKSANA PYZIK, GLOBAL HEALTH EXPERT, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LONDON: Good morning. It is a pleasure to be on with you today.

VAUSE: Thank you. There seems to be two very different strategies right now when it comes to schools. In the U.S., the Biden administration has placed a priority of opening and keeping schools open. In Europe, they're being shutdown.

The new variant is not yet dominant in the United States, but is that the only difference that we are talking about here? Once that variant takes hold in the U.S., do you expect them to start closing schools as well?

PYZIK: Well, the evidence is certainly not clear cut. I think this is why there is such policy confusion around making decisions, because even if we compare children aged 4 to 11, we see that they are underrepresented in the number of cases that are being transmitted amongst that group.

[02:20:00]

PYZIK: And the older children in high school are accounting for much more -- closer to how that transmission model looks in adults. So we need to also consider what area, what age they are in making these specific recommendations to government.

But equally, like you say, in the U.K., we have the variant, and now the South African variant, and that's causing a lot of I would say nervousness amongst the ministry of health, thinking about ensuring that we recover from what has been internationally widespread criticism for the highest death rate per capita, over 100,000 people have died.

So I do think that there is that political element also driving, a more cautious approach in the U.K. because if we turn to the evidence itself, again, there are risks, but it seems to be that some of that has been overestimated in terms of the mount transmission happening at schools. And the European CDC has more recent information to corroborate that.

But we also see that it's reflective of the level of community transmission overall. So if you are in a situation where you see cases are continually climbing, then of course, keeping those schools closed is going to be, unfortunately, a measure that needs to be taken.

But the harm that it does towards development, not just an educational inequality gap, but equally for social and overall development in children.

VAUSE (on camera): Yeah, and that is the universal concern, regardless of which country we are talking about. I want to ask you one more time. The U.S., the CDC has this recommendation on school re- openings. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROCHELLE WALENSKY, U.S. CDC DIRECTOR: We know that some of the variants have increased transmissibility. There is increasing data that suggests that some of the variants, the B117 variant, may actually be increased -- lead to increased mortality.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE (on camera): Unfortunately, something she would say, what she went on to say is that basically they do not see at this stage a need for teachers to be vaccinated, the school re-openings can go ahead without kids being vaccinated, without teachers being vaccinated. Will the new variant change that assessment for teachers and children? What is the situation across Europe?

PYZIK: I think teachers are being evaluated, the sort of next in line in terms of after we are able to get some of the most vulnerable populations and our health care workers. And with the emerging evidence that not only the B117 has potentially higher health complications and higher mortality rate, we suspect that the South African variant will fall in line with that, as well.

Certainly, once we have a clearer picture of that, I do think it's going to have a direct impact on the decision around schools and that vaccination priority list, especially when we see that it's mostly teachers that are the transmitters rather than the children themselves.

So teacher to teacher transmission, that is what the Public Health England findings have found, rather than students to teacher, and the teachers are at the highest health risk compared to the rather robust response that the children are demonstrating.

So I do think that there is cause for supporting teachers getting vaccines, but again, other environments, for instance, in health care facilities, the risk is much higher because the viral load exposure is also higher.

VAUSE: Explain to us the linking between this quarantine policy, which is set to go into effect, I think, a week from Monday in the U.K., February 15th, which would require 10 days in isolation for those who arrived from coronavirus hotspots. How does that effectively impact, you know, slowing the spread of the coronavirus in the face of these new variants?

PYZIK: Well, we see that from the errors made over the summer where we had an open border policy that -- that is when that B117 in early July was seeded in Europe.

And so really right now, the U.K. is one of the best in the world in terms of vaccination rates. And in order to protect that vaccination program, we have to get a grip on ensuring that we don't allow further variants to enter the country.

So there has been a big push for stricter border control, even stricter than what is currently being recommended or coming into play in the U.K. on February 15th. That's not for all travellers. It's not the Australia policy. It's for people arriving from high-risk countries. So there's been a lot of internal discussion around does this go far enough?

[02:24:50]

PYZIK: We heard from Nicholas Sturgeon that Scotland would like to see much stricter border controls for all travellers coming in, particularly because we don't want to allow vaccine resistant strains to come in and reverse all that benefit, essentially taking us back to square one where we have to re-vaccinate with a tweet vaccine.

So, really we have to think about the fact that maximum suppression equals minimum introduction of variants of significant concern. I think that's a lesson that almost a year on, U.K. governments are starting to learn.

VAUSE: Yes. It's true, quite a few lessons it seems a year on. Oksana Pyzik, thank you very much, from the University College of London School of Pharmacy. I appreciate you being with us.

PYZIK: Thank you.

VAUSE: Coming up on "CNN Newsroom," a U.S. congresswoman best known for espousing bizarre and dangerous conspiracy theories gets knocked down a few picks by her colleagues but not all of them. The amount of support she got maybe (INAUDIBLE) story.

Marjorie Taylor Greene' embrace of QAnon is partly why she was punished on Thursday. Coming up, a former follower of the (INAUDIBLE) explains why Congress did not go far enough.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VAUSE (on camera): Republicans refused to do it so the Democrat- controlled lower House did. Eleven Republican lawmakers voted with Democrats to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments.

That means 199 Republicans are OK with her calls to kill Nancy Pelosi. They're on board with her belief that school shootings are staged by gun control advocates and there is no end to the amount of crazy she believes.

Here's CNN's Ryan Nobles.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

UNKNOWN: We have order in the House.

RYAN NOBLES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The U.S. House voting today to remove freshman Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments.

REP. TED DEUTCH (D-FL): Conspiracy theories and hate are malignant. They do not fade away. We must stand up to them and say enough.

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): Never before in the history of this House has the majority abused its power in this way.

NOBLES (voice-over): The debate, including a last-ditch effort by the Georgia congresswoman to save her spot on two House committees.

REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): I was allowed to believe things that weren't true, and I would ask questions about them and talk about them, and that is absolutely what I regret.

NOBLES (voice-over): In a more than 10-minute speech amid a debate about your future, Greene attempted to put distance between herself and the vile conspiracy theories she said she once believed.

TAYLOR GREENE: School shootings are absolutely real. And every child that is lost, those families mourn it. I also want to tell you 9/11 absolutely happened.

NOBLES (voice-over): In the past, Greene has promoted conspiracies such as there not being evidence a plane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, and that the 2018 shooting at a Florida high school was fake or staged. She's also promoted the QAnon conspiracy.

[02:30:00]

GREENE: I never said any of these things since I have been elected for Congress. These were words of the past and these things do not represent me.

NOBLES (voice over): But as recently as last December, Greene defended QAnon believers in an interview with CNN.

GREENE: I think it's unfair to criticize regular American people that just are looking things up on the internet.

NOBLES (voice over): During her remarks, Greene spent as much time attacking her detractors, as she did trying to clean up her past comments. Democrats said Greene's remarks were too little too late.

REP. JIM MCGOVERN (D-MA): I didn't hear anybody apologize or retract the anti-Semitic and Islamophobic remarks that have been made, that have been posted over and over and over again.

NOBLES (on-camera): And the final vote to remove Greene from the committees wasn't close, 230 to 199, 11 Republicans voting with the Democrats. Now, Greene is still going to be a member of Congress, she's not expected to go anywhere, she's already raised a lot of money around this controversy, and she's scheduled to hold a press conference on Capitol Hill on Friday.

Ryan Nobles, CNN on Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN VAUSE, HOST, CNN INTERNATIONAL: A former QAnon supporter explained to CNN why Congress did not go far enough in removing Greene from those two committees.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ASHLEY VANDERBILT, FORMER QANON SUPPORTER: This is my opinion, she shouldn't have a job. Anyone that thinks anything - that there's any truth of anything that involves a Q (ph), they have no place in government.

VAUSE: Ashley Vanderbilt there has since renounced the cyber cult and has called it a dangerous political movement. While conspiracy theories and baseless claims were part of the motivation for that Capitol riot on January 6, it's what got then President Donald Trump impeached for inciting an insurrection.

The question now is, will Democrats subpoena Trump to testify next week at his second Senate trial? Trump's defense team has made it clear he will not do it voluntarily. CNN's Manu Raju tells us where it all stands now.

MANU RAJU, CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT, CNN: House Democrats are trying to goad Donald Trump into coming to Capitol Hill, testifying under oath before the Senate about the charge that he faced from the House that he incited insurrection, when he was impeached earlier in January and the aftermath of the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill.

They want him to come and talk about what he did, why he did what he did, and explain the legal brief that his team put out earlier in the week, in which they disputed some key facts. They disputed how Democrats characterized his speech before the rally-goers as well as everything he did into the run up to that January 6 rally.

But Donald Trump has no interest in doing that. They made it very clear through his advisors just yesterday - just earlier in the day. And also, the attorneys called it a publicity stunt. So if Democrats really want Donald Trump to testify, they would have to vote to subpoena him.

At the moment, it seems like that is an unlikely course. We'll see if that changes. But the other question remaining for the Democrats is how far do they go in pushing their case. Do they bring in other witnesses? What they're trying to do is show Donald Trump intentionally incited rioters to come to Capitol Hill, intentionally suggested the election was stolen, and intentionally subverted the will of voters - tried to subvert the will of voters by pressuring the election officials to change the election results.

Do they need witnesses for that? It's uncertain at this point. The Trump team is confident they'll ultimately have the votes to ensure Donald Trump is acquitted. At the moment, they are probably right. 17 Republican Senators would be needed to break ranks and join 50 Democrats to convict Trump, prevent him from ever standing for office again. That seems like highly, highly unlikely at the moment. But next week, the trials will begin, the arguments will begin and then the voting will take place.

Manu Raju, CNN, Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: When we come back, a look inside a lab in Wuhan, China. It's at the center of allegations about the coronavirus, plus our conversation with an investigator who was just allowed inside.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[02:35:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VAUSE: Well, protests are growing in Myanmar after a military coup this past Monday.

For three nights out, residents of Yangon have banged pots and pans. They say they're hoping to drive out their new military overlords, and are demanding the elected civilian government be restored. Military leaders are blocking access to Facebook and other social media sites, where dissent has been spreading, and more and more government officials continue to be rounded up.

A team of World Health Organization experts has been investigating the origins of the COVID-19 virus in Wuhan, China for almost a week. They've recently checked out a laboratory where President Trump and his senior officials asserted without any evidence that the virus was created and then escaped.

CNN's David Culver spoke with one of the investigators about what they found.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID CULVER, CORRESPONDENT, CNN (on-camera): John, we cannot overlook the timing of this WHO field mission. It comes 12 months after the city of Wuhan went on lockdown and more than a year after what was believed to be the original ground zero of this outbreak, the Huanan seafood market was shut down by Chinese authorities.

The officials who are part of this trip, one scientist in particular, have told us that they still believe despite the lag in time they have gotten good access to information that could ultimately lead to the origins of this virus.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have enough time to find the origins of coronavirus.

CULVER (voice over): A caravan of vehicles pulling into the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Onboard, international experts representing the World Health Organization. Their mission, to find the origin of COVID- 19.

DR. PETER DASZAK, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION MISSION EXPERT: What we're trying to do right now at this stage is keep an open mind about every possibility.

CULVER (voice over): CNN connected with zoologist Peter Daszak. He's part of the source tracing assignment here in China. Speaking to us from his hotel room in Wuhan, he had just visited the virology institute's highly secured and highly controversial lab. It is from here that former US President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have alleged without any evidence the virus originated.

DONALD TRUMP, 45TH U.S. PRESIDENT: I think they made a horrible mistake and they didn't want to admit it.

CULVER (voice over): China has rejected the claim.

DASZAK: It was good to see the lab and you confirmed your suspicions that it's an incredibly well built, well designed, well managed lab.

CULVER (voice over): Members of the scientific community have said that Daszak has a conflict of interest due to his close ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its leading scientist Shi Zhengli.

This video shot in 2014 shows the pair inside the institute examining coronavirus samples collected from bats. They've jointly published several scientific research papers.

DASZAK: She speaks very openly and quite directly and often goes counter to this sort of political trend.

CULVER (voice over): Shi Zhengli is known as bat woman in China. She's reached celebrity status. Since the SARS outbreak in 2003, she has focused her research on bats and the various coronaviruses they carry. But after COVID-19 was first detected in Wuhan, less than 10 miles from where her lab is located, speculation surface that the virus leaked from her facility.

MIKE POMPEO, FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: I've seen evidence that this likely came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

CULVER (voice over): The Trump Administration provided no evidence to support those claims.

CULVER (on-camera): Do you think it's possible this virus was engineered within that lab and leaked?

DASZAK: There's no evidence of that at all. But it is something that we talked about with people in Wuhan lab and got really honest and frank and good, informative answers to, because they themselves brought this up, conspiracies around lab leaks that they feel strongly have no grounds.

CULVER (voice over): Swarmed by media throughout their site visits, the WHO field team also inspected the hospitals where the early COVID- 19 patients were treated, along with the now infamous Huanan seafood market.

CULVER (on-camera): This place had a lot of attention over the past 12 months paid to it.

[02:40:00]

There was a lot of concern that perhaps the virus was still festering in spots. So the Chinese authorities essentially wiped it clean. Daszak and other experts agree it is most likely that the virus originated from wildlife, though without ruling it out, he stopped short of concluding it started in the market or even in Wuhan.

CULVER (voice over): CNN obtained these images from December 2019. They show a variety of caged creatures inside the now shuttered seafood market.

DASZAK: We're still piecing together the evidence. So we're looking at the animal evidence. You know, what was sold in the market? Where did it come from? What types of animals are the ones that could carry coronaviruses?

CULVER (voice over): China's state media has also suggested without evidence the virus might have been imported into the city on frozen foods, a claim leading health experts have dismissed as completely groundless.

But it is an origin theory Daszak is not ruling out. The team's field study expected to continue into next week.

CULVER (on-camera): How restricted is it? How much freedom do you have?

DASZAK: Well, we're not running rogue here. We're talking to our hosts, you know, we are in a foreign country and we're guests of China right now. So this is a good, collaborative, scientific approach to understanding more about the origins of COVID.

CULVER (voice over): A virus that has both upended and taken millions of lives around the globe. The source, a mystery, likely to remain unsolved for years.

CULVER (on-camera): One of the questions I posed to Daszak was about access. We've been on government trips here where we've essentially been told to look one way and to not look another way. And so, is this something that they're experiencing as they're going from one place to another, some of these critical site visits?

Well, Daszak says that it is a curated trip, that is to say the agenda has been set by the Chinese side. But he says the WHO experts had a lot of input into what was to be seen and experienced prior to this visit. He considers it to be transparent and to be good access.

Of course, that is one expert. There are more than a dozen others who are taking part in this field mission that is expected to continue for several more days, and then it could take a good while before their report is published. And even more time, john, before we know the actual source of this virus.

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VAUSE: David Culver there, thank you for that. Well, it's almost the Lunar New Year, which means get set for the world's largest human migration in China. But just like last year, the coronavirus pandemic means many celebrations have been canceled, and the government has imposed tough travel restrictions.

Quarantines are in place and migrant workers in the big cities are being discouraged from returning home to see family, with authorities demanding travelers spend two weeks in quarantine and pay for their own coronavirus tests. That's drawing anger from many migrant workers who say that is just impossible for them to do.

Thank you for watching CNN Newsroom. I'm John Vause. Stay with us. World Sport is next.

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