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GOP Senators Signal They will Acquit Trump Despite Damning Videos; Former GOP Officials Talk of Forming Breakaway Conservative Party; House Impeachment Managers to Wrap Up Case Against Trump Soon; House Impeachment Managers Present Evidence Linking Trump to Capitol Hill Rioters; Lawmakers Narrowly Escape Violent Mob. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired February 11, 2021 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:09]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Very good Thursday morning to you. You know we say it's a big news day. It sounds repetitive. But it is. Again. I'm Jim Sciutto.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And it certainly is again. We're glad you're with us. I'm Poppy Harlow.

Well, House impeachment managers have today, just today, eight hours left to convince 17 Republican senators that former President Trump incited and celebrated a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

New video stunned the Senate chamber on Wednesday, revealing how Vice President Pence and other key lawmakers narrowly, by feet, escaped the violent mob.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Rioters just paces away from people like the vice president. But is that video evidence enough to sway enough Republicans?

Let's get to CNN's Lauren Fox on Capitol Hill.

Lauren, the final day in effect of the Democrats' case. What do we expect today? Do we expect new evidence? What will be their closing argument?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they have eight hours today to make this case. We don't expect them necessarily to use all of that time but essentially you can expect more of this compelling discussion about what transpired on January 6th and how the former president was directly involved.

I think that was really the thrust of their argument yesterday as they showed some of that compelling video evidence. Many of those clips never seen before. Two U.S. senators who I think maybe didn't recognize how close they came to being confronted by a mob. You know, Senator Mitt Romney was shown in one of those videos being redirected to turn around so that he would not confront that mob.

And when we talked to him yesterday, after seeing that footage, he said he had no idea just how close he had come. That gives you a sense of just how startling this new footage was for U.S. senators sitting in that chamber yesterday -- Jim and Poppy.

HARLOW: And you know, Lauren, looking at it this morning, what is also so startling, I think, is the -- it's almost like Republican senators were watching different videos, if you look at how different their reactions are after yesterday.

FOX: Well, there was certainly a mix of reactions. You know, reporters asked Senator John Thune about how he was feeling after seeing some of this video, after hearing the presentation from the House managers. And what he told reporters was that he thought that the House managers were making a good case and connecting the dots between what had happened in Trump's speech on January 6th then before that and what happened transpired in the U.S. Capitol.

But then you had other Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham saying he thought this was a hypocritical presentation by the House managers. And I want to read you exactly what he told reporters. He said, "I think there are more votes for acquittal after today than there was yesterday because the hypocrisy is pretty large for these people standing up to, you know, voters when they gave -- when they came to my House, when they came to Susan Collins' House."

And I think that the argument that Republicans like Graham are making is that there's violence that has been talked about on both sides. Obviously, what happened at the Capitol, unprecedented. Unheard of. This is a building where we expect security, where we have an entire police force devoted to patrolling the U.S. Capitol. Very different circumstances. But I think that is showing you the two sides of the Republican Party right now -- Jim and Poppy.

SCIUTTO: Well, listen, there are also the president's specific words calling those insurrectionists to the Capitol that day based on a lie of a stolen election. You don't have a parallel with the visits to Collins' House, et cetera, but anyway, that's the argument.

Lauren Fox, thanks very much.

Listen, there's a lot to process, right? These videos are long. If you haven't had a moment to watch it, look and listen, let's take a moment now. Senior political analyst John Avlon has been going through it.

And, John, help people understand the argument that the Democratic House managers were making yesterday because they were trying to establish a cause and effect between President Trump's words and actions and what happened on that day January 6th.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right. And they are aided immeasurably by an avalanche of digital evidence where you can track Donald Trump's comments at rallies, the big lie, and seeing how it was adopted and amplified by his supporters. And then escalating into the January 6th rally where there was language of riot being used on message boards throughout. It was not a surprise, as they initially indicated. But for me, the clearest evidence of cause and effect, which is what

they're trying to establish between incitement and insurrection came at one very specific moment. It's a moment where Donald Trump called Mike Pence, his loyal vice president, a coward after he knew that the Capitol was under attack.

[09:05:02]

And in real time, the House managers put forward an example of Trump's tweet being read in real time through a megaphone by a rioter to the crowd. And that's when you saw these calls of Mike Pence is a traitor, hang Mike Pence, escalate. Let's take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mike pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution. Giving states a chance to certify or correct a set of facts. Not the false ones or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. The U.S. demands the truth.

Donald J. Trump sent a tweet out saying that Mike Pence let us down. Mike Pence let us down, people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: That's just very clear from Trump's Twitter account to the rioters in the crowd, taking it as incitement that Mike Pence is a traitor. As his family is being whisked off the floor by Secret Service. Under threat. That's a clear a cause and effect as you get.

HARLOW: Yes. But despite it, Ted Cruz says I don't see the line here. Right? But Senator Mitt Romney really, John, yesterday, expressing deep appreciation for the Capitol police officer, Eugene Goodman, who potentially saved his life in the middle of this.

AVLON: That's extraordinary. And that was one of the most powerful videos that we saw yesterday. It had not been seen before. Indeed Mitt Romney had not seen it before. You see here Officer Eugene Goodman running down the hallway. Mitt Romney all of a sudden being told the mob is coming that way, turn around. And you see Mitt Romney running really for his life because he knew there was real risk.

And after seeing this video, Romney recognized that it was Officer Goodman and thanked him personally. But you're seeing, you know, Officer Goodman is one of the real heroes of this attack and, you know, talking about someone who deserves a statue built in Statuary Hall, maybe should look at honoring him.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: All right. House impeachment manager Eric Swalwell, he mentions that other senators came within steps of the insurrectionists while evacuating. Tell us how close they get and what the video shows.

AVLON: Fifty-eight paces is what Eric Swalwell said. He counted it out himself. And over and over again, we saw variations of that video with Mitt Romney. We saw Chuck Schumer and his security detail being led away and then turning back. We saw the evacuation of senators down the stairwell as you see there while the mob is in the building looking for people to attack. And many of these folks were explicitly talking about attacking and targeting and hunting senior members of the Senate and the House, Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence, but not only that.

So you get a sense of just the very real time risk that all these senators were at risk. And that's one of the reasons it's so extraordinary to see Republicans not even factor in that kind of self- interest. Not just respect for their institution which came under attack, directed by a co-equal branch of government. But these rioters were out looking for violence and a lot of senators and congressmen might have escaped with their lives barely.

HARLOW: Barely. John Avlon, thank you so much for going through all of it for us.

Let's talk about where this goes from here. Our legal analyst Carrie Cordero joins us this morning. She's a former counsel for the U.S. assistant attorney general and also senior fellow at the Center for New American Security.

Carrie, great to have you. You know, you've got Ted Cruz saying, I don't see the line here from the president to these rioters, and then you have Republican Senator Lindsey Graham saying I think more votes for acquittal after today than there were yesterday. If you are an impeachment manager and you're hearing those things, what do you have to do today?

CARRIE CORDERO, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I think what they are going to do today is they are going to continue to lay out -- there might be additional evidence that we haven't seen yet. And then they are going to continue to wrap all the pieces that they've put together. So, so far, what they've been able to do is they've been able to outline the president's statements and his actions throughout the day. They've been able to show what the crowd was doing during the time they've been able to show the effect that it had on the members of Congress and the senators, including some of the security video that hadn't been seen before.

And so I think they are going to continue to try to show that timeline as it started throughout the days and weeks after the election and the president's continuation of saying that there had not been a valid election up until the hours and minutes of the event themselves. And so what they'll do is they'll tie that all together and then they're going to have to make the case for why that warrants conviction.

And there are certain senators, Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz probably among them, who are simply not going to change their mind. But there may be other Republican senators that we don't know.

[09:10:04]

We have to always leave that option open that they maybe hadn't seen how violent this event was and how close they came to both physical harm and to preventing them from doing their job that day.

SCIUTTO: Carrie, I know this is a political process. It's not a legal process. So there's no clear legal standard to meet here for responsibility. It's a political standard. But you've argued a lot of cases in court. You've seen them argued. Have House managers effectively established that connection, that the president's actions and words leading up to January 6th and on that day incited the insurrection?

CORDERO: Well, I approach this mostly -- so I wasn't so much of a trial lawyer. I was a national security lawyer, but I approach this from the perspective of looking at all of the research that scholars have done from an academic perspective as well as having been a Justice Department lawyer. And you're absolutely right, Jim, that there is not a hard and fast legal rule. So there's not a specific Supreme Court precedent that they can look to, to say this is the exact standard.

Conviction for high crimes and misdemeanors is whatever the senators think it is. And what the managers have been so effective in doing when they are trying to prove incitement is that they have shown, number one, that the participants in the event believe Donald Trump was directing them to be there. Two, they showed that Republican members of Congress believed that Donald Trump was in charge, that he had the power to call the event off.

And Representative Castro's articulation of that, in particularly the video showing Representative Gallagher saying, call it off. Begging the president. And that shows that the members even thought that Trump was in charge.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

CORDERO: And that we have the president, the former president's statements and his actions throughout the day continuing to try to prevent the certification of the election despite the fact that the attack was going on.

SCIUTTO: That's a great question for senators expressing doubts. If the president didn't have a role in inciting it, why was his voice so necessary, as you say, to call the rioters back? Why? We'll see if they have an answer.

Carrie Cordero, thanks very much.

CORDERO: Thanks.

SCIUTTO: Still to come this hour, more on the fight over the future of the GOP. Some Republicans are talking about a breakout conservative party. Will they pull it off? Who will it hurt? Who will it help?

Plus, new video evidence has narrowed the list of suspects in the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. The leading theory into what caused the officer's death just ahead.

HARLOW: Plus, a Minnesota mother of four takes on QAnon on social media battling conspiracy theories and disinformation. She'll be here live.

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[09:15:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CO-ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: Well, listen to this, after all you saw yesterday and today of this video, of the attack on that day, January 6th. Advisors to former President Trump say he still has not expressed any remorse over the deadly insurrection at the Capitol.

POPPY HARLOW, CO-ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: According to a source familiar with this situation, Trump and his Vice President Mike Pence have not patched up their relationship since Pence and his family were rushed away down those stairs by the Secret Service as the violent mob was just feet away. Let's go to our colleague, Boris Sanchez, he joins us reporting on former President Trump in West Palm Beach, Florida, good morning to you, Boris. The lack of remorse, contrition coming from Trump, is there a sense that it could potentially end up being significant in jurors' minds and senators' minds as they decide over the next few days his fate?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy and Jim. It's a real concern among Trump allies that this is going to be really tough for the former president to get over during these impeachment proceedings. The fact that as all this madness was unfolding on the Capitol on January 6th, Trump was tweeting out, commending his supporters, calling it a great day, saying that he loved them, that they were special, et cetera. So, it will be interesting to see how senators, especially on the Republican side try to angle and suggest that the president didn't intend for this to happen or wasn't happy that this took place.

And we also got some interesting reporting about the president's relationship with the former Vice President Mike Pence, and specifically, keep in mind as we're watching this video of the former vice president being escorted out of harm's way as rioters were calling for him to be executed, that the former president apparently has never called to actually apologize to Mike Pence to say he was sorry or to express any remorse for vilifying him in such a way for moving forward and certifying the results of the 2020 election. We also got some new reporting about the Trump legal team and a change in approach that we're anticipating when they start the defense of Donald Trump tomorrow.

Apparently, as we reported previously, Trump was furious that his lawyers did not make for very good television when they presented their arguments on Tuesday. Now, we're learning the Trump team is scrambling to put together videos and visual aids so that his attorneys essentially have something to go with to make it more TV friendly.

[09:20:00]

Trump, of course, being obsessed with optics. It also does afford him a sort of win, in a sense that it will give his attorneys less speaking time which allies of the former president and also Republicans have acknowledged was not to his benefit. Jim and Poppy?

SCIUTTO: Yes, not quite an expression of confidence in your attorneys, the attorneys if you don't want to hear from them. Boris Sanchez, thanks very much. Well, the former president's grip on some in the Republican Party is holding firm despite those damning videos shown by House Impeachment managers linking him, his comments, his actions to the deadly insurrection on Capitol Hill. Many GOP senators are still signaling they plan to acquit the former president. That's it. Some former GOP officials are trying to shake Trump's influence in the party and are now discussing the possibility of forming a breakaway conservative party. Here's former Republican Congressman Charlie Dent.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLIE DENT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I'd mentioned that, you know, I was part of a conversation last Friday with about 120 Republican leaders, you know, who are just having conversations among ourselves. You know, do we need a new faction within the GOP?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Well, joining me now is former Republican Congressman Francis Rooney of Florida, he served just until a few weeks ago. Thanks so much for joining us this morning.

FRANCIS ROONEY, FORMER CONGRESSMAN: Thank you, Jim. Thanks for having me on.

SCIUTTO: So, you've seen the evidence as presented by your former colleagues, the house managers in this case. If you were sitting in judgment here, was the evidence of the president's involvement here in January 6th convincing to you? Would you, given the opportunity, vote to convict?

ROONEY: Yes, I would. I think it's impossible to argue, given the pre-election through January 6th, the concerted campaign to create the big lie that the election was stolen, which, by the way, all authoritarian rulers do the big lie thing. That's how they get away with what they do. That it wasn't foreseeable. And if it's foreseeable, I think that people ought to be impeached for it. And as you all just said on your TV, the fact that they were asking him to stop it shows people must have thought he started it.

SCIUTTO: Yes, the -- I wonder just on the big lie, is that baked in to some degree in today's Republican Party? I saw that Josh Mandel who is going to run for Rob Portman's seat, he says the election was stolen from Trump. You have the most senior Republican in Michigan not apologizing for saying on a hot mic that, well, it was really a false flag operation on January 6th. Those weren't Trump supporters. Those were somehow Antifa. In other words, you know, two lies. Has that been expunged from the party? And if not, what does it take to do that?

ROONEY: Yes, that's the $64,000 question. I mean, this people living in their own alternate realities with no willingness to confront any fact that doesn't agree with them has led us to that kind of situation. I mean, I know Josh Mandel quite well. I've helped him out a lot when he was in a prior political positions. I can't imagine he would say something as ignorant as that.

SCIUTTO: Well, here we are, right? So, you have --

ROONEY: Yes --

SCIUTTO: This idea of -- and you heard Charlie Dent, another former colleague of yours talking about this breakaway conservative party. Do you think that's the way forward for the GOP?

ROONEY: Yes, I've been in a lot of those conversations, Charlie is a great guy, Ambassador Bolton has been involved in that. Bill Kristol; one of your commentators has been involved in it. I would rather -- before we would go to that point, I would rather that we refocus our own party. You know, we were here first. The Republican Party stood for things for many years that are important, and for some reason, the Trump group, the protectionist, populist-isms of -- as George Bush used to say, I shall let isolationism, nativism and protectionism have taken us hostage, and we need to get back to what defined our party as an alternative to the Democrats in a constructive manner. Free trade, globalization, multilateral deals.

I mean, because Trump wouldn't do TTP, there's a TTP in Asia now, but China has taken our place. Safe and legal immigration. You know, those are the kind of things we used to stand for. We even had a seat at the environmental and the Second Amendment table. You know, George Bush wanted to make the assault weapon ban permanent --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

ROONEY: And he expanded the Clean Air Act as did his dad. So, we've got a lot of work to do, and I would start by ignoring Trump. I don't think it's good that McCarthy went down there and appeased him.

SCIUTTO: Do you sense any real movement in the party away from Trump? It remains a vocal minority, right? The ten Republicans who voted to impeach. The 11 Republicans who voted to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments, although, on a secret ballot, in terms of Liz Cheney and her leadership role, it was a good two-thirds of the Republican conference who on a secret ballot when their names aren't attached to it, you know, voted to back her.

[09:25:00]

I mean, in those moves, do you see a significant shift or is it really still a minority, a vocal minority?

ROONEY: I think it's lurking under the table, and there hasn't been a catalyst yet to drive it forward. And so when people continue to appease Trump or say ignorant things, it emboldens him and it makes it harder for people who say something privately and vote privately for Liz to speak out publicly. I mean, I was about the only one speaking up against Trump the whole last few years, and took all kinds of heat for it, got a bunch of death threats, the whole bit. But we need more people to speak up and, you know, kind of call out the emperor in the clothes thing, you know.

SCIUTTO: OK, so let's see. We may have a vote on this trial by -- as soon as Saturday. And, listen, I don't like to prejudge any outcomes because we can always be surprised, but it does look like that the president will be acquitted here. What is the message to the party then? You can imagine the president celebrating and saying, look, false charges. I was twice acquitted by these hyper political processes here, et cetera. Do you see the party taking the same message to say, well, he got away with it, I guess we're stuck with him?

ROONEY: I think for a short time, he will be emboldened, like you say, and he will be boasting and his base will be reinforced, but overtime, I've got to think if we can -- more and more people will start to speak up about traditional Republican values and the damage that was done by this administration to those principles that I just talked about, that more people will speak up. First thing is just isolate him. Just don't give him a platform. I've got to say, the minority leader has got the right idea. He doesn't even mention him. And maybe we shouldn't be going down and talking to him, going to rallies. You know, what did Churchill say about an appeaser, that he feeds the crocodiles hoping he'll get eaten last.

SCIUTTO: Yes, it's a good -- it's a good line. And there's a lot of -- there's a lot of precedents for that in Trump world. Well, former Congressman Francis Rooney, you're always welcome on the program. Thanks very much for joining.

ROONEY: Thanks, Jim. Have a good day.

HARLOW: All right, ahead for us, the Biden administration's pledge to reopen most schools within the first 100 days of this administration. It is very close to going off the rails. We'll tell you what they're actually able to do ahead. We're also moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street, futures pointing higher this morning. This despite America's unemployment crisis showing no signs of letting up. We just learned another 793,000 Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week. We'll see how the market reacts when it opens in just a few minutes.

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