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Soon, Trump Lawyers Deliver Impeachment Defense; Nikki Haley Criticizes Trump, Says He Has No Future in the GOP. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired February 12, 2021 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: A very good Friday morning. I'm Jim Sciutto.

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

Well, the second impeachment trial of former President Trump could wrap up very soon likely this weekend. Just in a few hours, lawyers for the former president will lay out their defense. Sources say they're only going to take up to maybe four hours of the 16 hours they have to make their case.

Their challenge, rebut a very thorough case laid out by the impeachment managers. Senators sat through hours of just stunning video evidence this week as the former president was painted as a dangerous leader who unleashed a violent mob on the Capitol.

SCIUTTO: We are also following some encouraging news on the coronavirus pandemic and the response. President Biden said that the U.S. will have enough vaccine doses now for 300 million Americans by the end of July, 200 million more doses than we knew before the last 24 hours, and that pharmacies, such as Walgreens and CVS, are set to begin administering COVID vaccines today, another way to get those vaccinations.

Let's begin though with CNN's Manu Raju up on Capitol Hill. So, Manu, what do we expect to see and hear from the defense team today and for how long?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're trying to adjust how they did earlier in the week when the Trump defense team came under withering criticism from Republican senators and from Donald Trump, private himself, over the meandering presentation they gave to contend that the proceedings are unconstitutional.

This time around, we're expecting, at least they're saying, that this is going to be shorter, in their view, crisper and more direct and expecting about three to four hours. They're not going to use anywhere near the 16 hours they're allotted over two days. Instead they're saying they could go up to four hours to get everything completed. And we're expected to hear of the arguments reiterated that is not constitutional, in their view, that the Senate impeachment trial has no jurisdiction in trying a former president.

Also, I talked to both of the attorneys who are expected to do much of the arguments today, Bruce Castor and David Schoen. What they are going to argue is that there is no direct link between the president's actions and the actions of the insurrectionists. Even all of the evidence the Democrats presented in trial over the last couple of days, they're saying, well, the president didn't -- former President Trump at that time was not directly explicitly commanding them to go to the Capitol and commit acts of violence. You hear some iteration of that while also arguing his speech on January 6th, before that rally, was simply political speech.

So those are the arguments that they are planning to make. And also this could happen -- everything could move quickly to a final vote as soon as Saturday. I'm hearing that a question-and-answer period, where senators can ask questions on both sides, could happen as soon as tonight. And then the question will be, will there be witnesses. It seems highly unlikely that is the case as they move to the final vote as soon as tomorrow, guys.

HARLOW: Manu, before you go, what are you hearing from Republicans on the Hill about the trial so far?

RAJU: Well, surprisingly, Republican senators have been praising the Democratic presentation, saying that it was well-delivered, well- executed, but that doesn't mean their minds have been changed. They keep going back to the same process argument that they have been making for days, that this is unconstitutional, that they can't move past that concern.

So that is a clear sign that they are moving to acquit Donald Trump. There really are not more than six senators at the moment who are considering convicting Donald Trump and, of course, we need at least 17 of all 50 join hands and vote to convict, and that 17 is simply not there. But as one Republican senator, John Cornyn, told me yesterday, the Democratic impeachment managers did a good job and they've set a high standard for the Trump team to clear today. Guys?

HARLOW: Okay. Manu, thank you for that reporting.

Now, to last night's Republican meeting on the sidelines of this trial that is really raising so many eyebrows this morning. Three Republican senators who, we remind you, swore to be impartial jurors, met with Trump's defense team.

SCIUTTO: Lauren Fox joins us now with more on this. I mean, first question is, is that allowed? It is a political process, not a legal process, so it doesn't follow the same rules. So is it allowed, one, and, two, do we know what they discussed?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, individual senators' actions are obviously up to their own discretion in how they want to be viewed on Capitol Hill. Certainly, the view of many lawmakers has been if I'm a juror, I should be going into this trial with an open mind. That is certainly had been the case of some of the Republican members. But, clearly, these members have already made up their minds.

And there is a reason that we are talking about the fact that Trump's defense team today is not going to talk very long on the floor. That's because they think that they have the winning argument here. They have no view that 17 Republicans would be willing to vote to convict Trump.

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And so I think this idea that these three Republican lawmakers were meeting with Trump's defense team isn't all that surprising.

I also want to point out that yesterday on the Senate floor, there were multiple times when we would go out to the chamber and there were a lot of Republicans not in their seats listening to these arguments. That is a sign, right, that they're minds have really been made up for a long time.

They have been unable to move past this process argument that this isn't a constitutional process, that is something that, of course, they voted on on Tuesday. Something that Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager argued, that vote already happened, it is time to move on and really talk about the merits of the argument, was Trump responsible for the insurrection at the Capitol.

But, clearly, those three members, Senator Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Lindsey Graham meeting with Trump's defense team making it clear obviously where they stand. Jim and Poppy?

SCIUTTO: Well, by not showing up, they are not doing their jobs. If you or I or Poppy were called to do jury duty, we would be expected to be in that chamber and they're not willing to do it.

Lauren Fox, good to have you out there.

Joining us now is Elliot Williams, he's a former federal prosecutor, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General. Elliot, good to have you.

So the argument today apparently beyond saying they glorify violence, which is a remarkable argument to make given the president's comments repeatedly about violence and using violence is going to be that it's no different from Democratic leaders who said good things about George Floyd protesters, right, and then the violence that followed in some cities. Your legal response to that argument, to that equivalency?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Sure. It wouldn't be different if Democrats were to have said, hey, George Floyd protesters, please march down to the state house, please burn it down, and when it is happening, I'm going to cheer you on while it is happening. Expressing support for the underlying cause or the underlying reasons behind why a group is protesting is vastly different than a political leader inciting the group sitting back while it wreaks its havoc and failing to call it off once things get incredibly out of hand. It was 2 hours and 15 minutes by the time Donald Trump was put on notice that Mike Pence himself, his own vice president, was put in extreme danger and evacuated, and the time the president issued a video, sort of wishy-washy video telling people to go home. So you cannot -- I mean, there are going to be on both sides.

At any time there has been violence anywhere on something deemed to be the left in the last several years, you're going to hear about it today and it is just all false equivalency, exactly as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse was saying on the program about 15 minutes ago.

HARLOW: So, Elliot, outside of making that false equivalency argument, you have a really interesting recommendation for the defense and that is just do no harm.

WILLIAMS: Yes. It is the Hippocratic oath trial to some extent. Because we've seen their arguments before on the very first day of the opening arguments and by any objective or subjective measure, they just weren't that strong. They got outlawyered in the first day and you saw some brilliant stirring, legally accurate, legally correct but also personally evocative performances by the House lawyers over the last several days, and you just didn't see that from Trump's team.

To add on to Lauren's point, it is not -- just a moment ago, it is not just that Trump's lawyers think they have the winning argument, it's just they know they have the winning votes. And so keep your mouth shut. It's clear -- I'm not giving them advice, I'm just saying this is their strategy, they should just keep their mouth shut because it is likely that they're going to win and why risk the possibility of stepping in it even further or even more than they already did in that disastrous first day of arguments that they had.

SCIUTTO: Okay. Just the central question of this impeachment is, the central allegation that the president incited the January 6th Capitol riot, and I want to play for you a video of the president's words and connected to those events we saw on January 2nd and ask you what the response in effect of this (ph). First, have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Stop the steal.

PROTESTERS: Stop the steal. Stop the steal.

TRUMP: That's treason. That's treason.

PROTESTERS: Treason, treason, treason.

TRUMP: I will tell you right now, I'm not hearing good stories.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because Mike Pence is a (BLEEP) traitor.

TRUMP: The Democrats are trying to steal the White House. You cannot let them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They don't get to steal it from us. TRUMP: We're bringing our country back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We want our country back.

TRUMP: This is our country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is our house. This is our country. This is our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: The exact verbatim, right, of the president's words in the days and weeks leading up to January 6th and on January 6th from the folks who invaded the Capitol here. What is the defense team's response to that?

WILLIAMS: Right, and don't even take it from these clips that you saw from an unsealed indictment yesterday, I believe, of a member of the Proud Boys, she also explicitly says, I believed we were directed here by the president.

[10:10:05]

What they will attempt to do is say, and this is Republican senators already making this point, this is that this violence was terrible. It was horrible. And, of course, we condemn it. But the president didn't direct it. The president was merely engaging in protective political speech and these bad people, who should all be prosecuted, went off and did their own thing.

Now, the differences the president had four years, five years of glorifying political violence, beat that guy up and I'll pay his legal fees was something that the president has once said at one of his political rallies, to the point that Ted Cruz, I believe it was April 12th, 2016, candidate Ted Cruz criticized candidate Donald Trump, my how times change, for the fact that he was egging on his supporters and urging them engage in violence.

And so the idea that, well, the word, fight, has multiple connotations and the president wasn't telling people to fight just falls flat. Again, it seems clear that 44 senators are already with them and maybe they just go with that.

HARLOW: Elliot, really quickly, you've been tweeting about the talk of a potentially secret vote when it comes time to acquit or convict. Could you explain that to folks?

WILLIAMS: Sure. Perhaps Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has already said this is now a vote of conscience. Republican senators are free to vote how they wish. And perhaps if there were a secret vote, there might be more Republicans willing to put their necks out there.

The problem that I think the political benefit to Democrats is that if it is a public vote, it puts all Republicans on the record. If it is not going -- if it is ultimately not going to end in a conviction, and that seems like where it's going. Now, I think the Democrats know that they need to put that vote out there and let every single voter in America in swing states or not swing states know how they're senators voted. And let them know how in Missouri, how Josh Hawley voted or how Ted Cruz voted, and let them carry this for the rest of their careers.

HARLOW: Good to have you as always, Elliot, thank you. We'll see you soon.

WILLIAMS: Thanks.

HARLOW: Well, still to come for us, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley says, former President Trump, quote, let us down, as she calls for unity and more and more Republicans float the idea of leaving the party. We'll talk to one of them leading that charge ahead.

And as rioters storm the Capitol building, we are learning the mob came dangerously close to the so-called nuclear football and the Pentagon had no idea.

SCIUTTO: It is alarming. And new details on the effort to get children back in classrooms, are vaccines for teachers going to be a requirement? We are covering all the headlines. That's ahead.

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SCIUTTO: Less than two hours from now, the nation and the world will watch as former President Trump's legal team lays out its defense. It comes as major political players and one-time Trump loyalist and very, very possibly a future presidential contender in 2024, Nikki Haley, is now coming out criticizing her former boss, telling Politico in an extensive new piece, quote, I a don't think he's going to be in the picture. I don't think he can. He's fallen so far. We need to acknowledge he let us down. He went on the path he shouldn't have and we shouldn't have followed him and we shouldn't have listened to him and we cannot let that happen again.

Well, this comes as more than a few Republicans are calling for a new Republican Party, a center-right party. Former Chief Policy director for the House Republican Conference Evan McMullin is one of the leaders floating this idea, he joins us now, along with former Republican Senator and former Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum. Gentlemen, thank you for being here. I'm really glad to have this conversation. I think it is a critically important one right now.

Senator Santorum, let me begin with you. You read the big piece on Nikki Haley this morning. And in it, she describes watching President Trump's rally on the 6th, right before the insurrection, and she said, I can't want watch it, I can't watch it and she turned it off. She says, because I felt the same thing. Somebody is going to hear that and bad things will happen. What do you make of her saying this now but not before? RICK SANTORUM, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. In fact, the piece was actually pretty critical of her and her conversations with the president before January 6th and why she didn't speak up during that time. And I think she just sort of demurred and said, well, that wasn't her job or she didn't feel like it was her responsibility.

So, look, I think a lot of people, you know, were frustrated that the president wasn't listening to anybody other than people who were bought into the theories that he won the election and wasn't listening to anybody else. And so I think there was a lot of frustration. I can tell you that I and many others reached out to people at the White House and tried to get some sanity there but it just didn't work.

HARLOW: When did you do that, Rick? Do you mean on that day?

SANTORUM: No, no, no, no. This is during the two months intervening. There were lots of conversations between lots of folks trying to, you know, get the White House off this -- what we saw as sort of a death spiral.

HARLOW: Well, interesting, Nikki Haley says in that piece, Evan. She goes, well he believed it. The president believed it.

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And that begs the question, so what? If you didn't, what did you do prior? But, Evan, I mean, this is sort of the backdrop, right, Nikki Haley very likely running in 2024, calling out Trump now, and you saying and leading this group of Republicans saying, it is not just we need someone different to run, we need a new party. We need a new center-right party. You said the status quo was unsustainable.

I know you had the Zoom call on Friday with 120 Republicans on it. Are you going to do this?

EVAN MCMULLIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, STAND UP REPUBLIC: Well just to be clear that, Zoom call on Friday, and it included people who had supported Trump in the past and those of us who have been opposed to him all throughout the last four to five years. But the discussion was not about necessarily starting a new party, it was about what are we going to do? The party is in a terrible place, it is become a destructive force in American politics. There are plenty of good Republicans still in my home state of Utah. There are plenty of them. They are elsewhere in the country too. But, collectively, the party has become a destructive force. January 6th made that clear.

So we discussed what to do. And we even polled the participants of the call and 40 percent thought that there should be a new party and 43 percent thought that we should start with a faction inside of the GOP or a faction, maybe they would act independently of the GOP as well. That was a part of the discussion. But slightly more people thought we should start a faction and go from there.

And I will stay that many of us, the only way at this point we can stay in the Republican is if there is some kind of faction for us to belong to that is committed to truth and decency and our democratic republic and the constitutional order, all of the things that Rick and I have supported for decades. And we need that. And if we don't have a place inside of the party, then I guess we'll be forced to find something else. But that is a difficult road and so we're trying to figure it out.

HARLOW: It is also a really -- well, it could open the door more and help Democrats, right, Rick? That is one thing that could happen, if you swing to the party, that is sort of what the RNC is warning of, we have to be more united. But what do you think about the idea, Rick? Are you open to a new party?

SANTORUM: Look, I think American history has shown that this is a country that is solidly based on the a two-party system and that third parties generally don't do very well or last very long. So whether the Republican Party goes away and a new party becomes, I guess that is possible. But I don't see it that way.

I think there is plenty of room for Evan Mcmullins and others who didn't agree with the president particularly because of the character issues and the way he behaved but were in support of much of his political agenda.

So, as you know, I wrote a book back in 2014 called Blue Collar Conservatives. I think that is the future of the Republican Party. That's who Republican voters are, they are working men and women across this country and increasingly, and I believe will be increasingly, of all races and all colors.

So I think that is the focus. I think we are not the party of the elites. We used to be. We're not any more. We're not the party of big business. We used to be. We're not any more. We're the party of working men and women and we have to construct an agenda that holds together principal conservatives and more populist elements within the party and bring that together to a winning coalition.

HARLOW: How do you do that?

MCMULLIN: Could I just respond to that? Yes. So, first of all, I think it is wonderful that we have more blue collar voters in the Republican Party now. That shouldn't change. And I agree with Rick. We need to be better about speaking to them. We gained some of those votes, the Republican Party did, over the last several years. We can give Donald Trump some credit for that. But it was done, in my view, in a destructive way. There is a positive way to do it, a way to actually offer them solutions rather than demagoguery because that leads to a destructive place.

And to clarify for people like me who have advocated for a new direction for party for five years now publicly, at least, we didn't oppose Trump because of just character or style issues, as many say and as Rick sort of said before, it is because he led an effort to unravel the republic. And if that isn't clear by now with the January 6th insurrection, which he led, which was deadly, then nothing else could possibly make that clear. But it does make that clear.

And we are in -- we are in favor of conservative center-right policies, but, look, we're not in favor of running up the deficit by $8 trillion. Even during a period of expansion, we were deficit spending, spending trillion dollar deficits every year or approaching that.

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The children in cages, the attack on trade, and there can be adjustments there, I acknowledge, I mean, there are plenty of things. The attacks on our allies, the unraveling of the democracy of the Free State Alliance that has kept the peace in the world for decades. And there are plenty of things that we did not support and did not agree with, there are other things that we did, de-regulation, these kinds of things. Yes, of course, we support those things. We supported them before Trump and many of us still do. But it is not just about character and style.

HARLOW: I'm glad you're both on. We're out of time. But come back, okay, because there are many more questions and there is a bigger conversation to have here. Evan McMullin, Rick Santorum, it is nice to see people getting along even with different visions of what the future is. Thank you, gentlemen.

MCMULLIN: Thank you.

SANTORUM: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Yes, their public debate within the Republican Party.

Well, the other story we're covering this morning, the CDC is set to issue official guidance today on reopening schools for in-person learning. Will it clean up Biden administration's mixed messaging on when and how to send kids back into the classroom?

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