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Senator Can't Quit Baseless Conspiracies; Sheriff Says Tiger Woods Crash Was Purely an Accident; GOP Lawmakers to Roll Back Voter Access. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired February 24, 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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SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): This didn't seem like an armed insurrection to me. When you think and hear armed, don't you think of firearms?

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JOHN AVLON, CNN SENOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Since he's just asking the question here's the former Capitol police chief.

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STEVEN SUND, FORMER CAPITOL POLICE CHIEF: I witnessed insurgents beating police officers with fists, pipes, sticks, bats, metal barricades and flag poles. These criminals came prepared for war.

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AVLON: And that's not counting the rioter found with a handgun and 25 rounds or the man with what a judge called a small armory including three guns and 11 Molotov cocktails. The news isn't that Johnson is wrong. That's just table stakes at this point. It's that in the face of evidence he fans the flames of disinformation and all of that has an effect.

Get this, a recent USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll shows that 58 percent of Trump voters believe that the assault on the Capitol was a, quote, mostly Antifa-inspired attack that only involved a few Trump supporters, and Trump's handmaidens like Johnson are responsible for this continued embrace of unreality.

Even Ted Cruz is now calling this.

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SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): The terrorist attack that unfolded on the Capitol.

(END VIDEO CLIP) AVLON: Yes, that Ted Cruz who tried to delay the electoral vote count after the attack is now admitting it was terrorism, at least when he wasn't playing with his phone during the hearing. But a lot of right wing deflections are biting the dust as more information arise.

For example, Cruz's comrade Josh Hawley tried to establish a toe hold on that conservative conspiracy theory that Nancy Pelosi delayed the National Guard deployment. No dice. But even for a guy whose lawyers have argued that he's not expected to tell the truth this one aged badly.

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TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: There's no evidence that white supremacists were responsible for what happened on January 6th. It's a lie.

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AVLON: OK. Because when Senator Amy Klobuchar asked would you agree that this attack involved white supremacists and extremist groups, all the officials testifying answered yes, and that's your reality check.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: John, thank you.

Breaking news this afternoon and the car accident involving Tiger Woods. Again, it is now being framed as an accident. He was, thank goodness, wearing his seat belt, but what type of recovery does he face in the weeks and months and years ahead?

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BALDWIN: Here's the news on Tiger Woods this afternoon. He is awake. He is responsive, and he is recovering from his emergency surgery following yesterday's high-speed crash.

The car rolled over multiple times and now being deemed a car accident from the L.A. County Sheriff's Department. The 45-year-old golf legend and father of two suffered multiple fractures through his right leg and ankle, and all of this comes just a month after his fifth back surgery.

With me now Dr. Daryll Dykes, he is an orthopedic surgeon at Upstate Medical University. So Dr. Dykes, good to see you. Welcome.

DR. DARYLL DYKES, ORTHOPEDIC SURGEON, UPSTATE MEDICAL UNIVERSITY: Brooke, thank you. Good to be here.

BALDWIN: All right, so here's what Tiger Woods' doctors say, this part of the statement.

That both bones in Woods' lower right leg, the tibia and fibula had been broken in multiple places and were, quote, open fractures meaning they pierced his skin. So just hearing, help us understand what that meant doctors had to do

in the surgery.

DYKES: Sure. There are a couple of things that were immediately on their attention. It's easy to focus on the broken bones, but in many of these cases it's actually the open part of the fracture that is more significant, the fact that it's now exposed to the outside environment where there's a risk for infection and other complications.

BALDWIN: So that would then complicate it because not only are they, what, having to fix the bones, it's exposed to the elements because the bone, is forgive me if you all are eating your lunch, sticking out of his skin, correct. And so they would -- what would they have to do with that?

DYKES: So there are two things that are important here. Number one is to actually clean the site and make sure that they limit chances for infection later on, but we've all heard about the fasciotomies that Mr. Woods had to have. And quite simply that's just opening the connective tissue layers around the muscles to make sure that the muscles have adequate room to expand and swell. And if that doesn't happen that's one of the potential major risks that the muscles actually die or atrophy.

BALDWIN: And it's my understanding because he had that procedure that means he will at least have to have one other surgery and perhaps even others.

Can you explain the pins and the rods and the screws then that have been put in him, and might there be other injuries that we're not aware of?

DYKES: Sure, the pins and rods and screws are to address the boney part of the injury, the bone fractures themselves, and in this case because the tibia is a long bone, the doctors inserted a rod to stabilize this -- this -- this broken bone.

And we've heard the word, comminuted which actually means the bone was broken in more than one place. So this rod and the screws are actually to stabilize the boney injury and again this fasciotomy part of the procedure was to make sure the surrounding soft tissues, the muscles, the ligaments and the tendons are protected while they're healing.

BALDWIN: So Dr. Dykes what is the rehab, what is the physical therapy process looking like for him, and when could he be actually up and walking again?

DYKES: It's going to be a long road to recovery in most cases of open fractures, but once the bones are stabilized, walking is actually not the biggest concern. Oftentimes patients are able to get up and start walking relatively early.

[15:40:00]

Again, it depends -- BALDWIN: Define early, doc. Are we talking months, weeks?

DYKES: Sure. Well, it really depends, and, of course, only the doctors that are treating Tiger Woods know for sure about his specific injury. But in general many times when we fix the bones with the rods and screws patients can actually start walking immediately. Other times there are delays depending upon the particular fracture pattern, and it could be weeks or sometimes even months.

BALDWIN: Do you think, and, again, you haven't treated him, but in general with these sorts of injuries, is golf in his future ever again?

DYKES: Yes. It's -- it's really hard to say, and over the past 24 hours a lot of us have probably learned more than we ever expected to learn about these orthopedic injuries. But what I'll tell you is many times -- many times these are actually limb-threatening injuries. Patients in the past have lost their limbs because of these types of injuries.

We've come a long way in limb-salvage surgery, and many times patients are able to resume relatively normal and sometimes even completely norm function and quality of life after these types of surgeries.

BALDWIN: It is absolutely extraordinary what you all are able to do. Dr. Daryll Dykes, thank you so much, and obviously our best wishes to Tiger Woods and his family. Thank you.

DYKES: My pleasure. Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: You got it.

A new approach to dealing with Russia. New details about what President Biden is planning in response to recent hacking attacks and the jailing of Alexey Navalny, that Putin critic.

But first, a programming note for you this Sunday night when Abraham Lincoln was elected, the Southern states began to secede from the Union. See how president-elect Lincoln had to navigate that unprecedented time. It's called "Lincoln, Divided We Stand," it's a CNN original series. It continues Sunday night at 10:00 Eastern and Pacific here on CNN.

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BALDWIN: The 2020 election saw historic voter turnout with roughly two in every three eligible voters casting a ballot according to Pew Research.

Of course, in an election like no other in the middle of a deadly pandemic, how votes were cast look different than previous years. But measures put in place to keep people safe like drop boxes and expanded mail-in voting are already being rolled back. State lawmakers have filed more than 100 bills since the November

election aimed at reforming election procedure and limiting voter access. So what does all that have mean?

Let's go to CNN legal analyst Elie Honig. He's former U.S. assistant U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York. Elie, is there a question? Is there a connection between the big lie that there was this, you know, widespread fraud in the 2020 election -- which we know there was none at all -- and these new legislative efforts?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Brooke, this is the big lie in action. We're seeing right now people are taking this lie that there was election fraud and using it to influence and really infect our laws, our policies, our most fundamental democratic process of voting.

What we're seeing right now is lawmakers, state-level lawmakers, politicians throughout the country taking this false claim that there was election fraud or the sort of softer lighter version that we're seeing emerge now, is people are saying, well, we don't know. Who's to say? We know there was no significant fraud.

But taking that pretext and using it to really pull back on voting access laws to make it harder for people to vote. It's not just Donald Trump. There are enablers, there are people echoing this nonsense all around the country.

Most recently Justice Clarence Thomas who went out of his way in a Supreme Court dissent to give oxygen to these false claims which to me was really alarming to see.

BALDWIN: So what are some of the -- the specific kinds of restrictions on voting that are being proposed and then just who has the legal authority to actually impose these new election rules?

HONIG: Yes, so, first of all, people should understand there is not one centralized federalized Washington, D.C.- based bureau of elections. It's largely state by state.

We have 51 different election systems, one for each state and D.C. What kind of specific things? Early voting. Some states allow early voting up to two weeks early, other states don't allow it at all. Mail-in voting, drop boxes, like you just discussed. There's a lot of discretion here state by state and so states that have Republican- dominated legislatures are starting to propose these laws to make it harder to vote.

BALDWIN: What can people do about it? Is there any legal recourse to challenge this?

HONIG: So there's two things. First of all, the Congress, the federal Congress, the House and the Senate. If they want, the Constitution specifically says it's up to the states unless the Congress passes laws.

So if the Democratic controlled Senate and the House and the White House all get on the same page, they can pass federal laws that supersede the states. In other words they could pass a federal law that says everywhere in the country must allow early voting, "x" days early.

The other thing we're going to see, Brooke, is lawsuits. We saw a bunch before the election. I think every time one of these law passes expect to see people who are interested in this start filing the lawsuits and these battles are really going to be fought out in the courts.

BALDWIN: We'll watch it, we'll talk about it. Elie Honig, thank you so much.

HONIG: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Big news today about the new vaccine that could be released as soon as next week. What you need to know about a potential option from Johnson & Johnson that is only one dose.

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BALDWIN: In what will be a clean break from the last administration, officials in the Biden administration tell CNN the White House is preparing to impose sanctions on Russia in the coming weeks.

The reason for the sanctions two fold. Number one, because of the poisoning and jailing of Alexey Navalny and number two, that SolarWinds hack which was a devastating security breach of at least nine federal agencies and dozens of private businesses.

I want to bring in Bill Browder. He's the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management. He's also the author of "Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man's Story for Justice."

[15:55:00]

It is Browder's personal story of exposing corruption when he lived and worked in Russia and then barely escaping with his life. So Bill, welcome, sir.

BILL BROWDER, AUTHOR, "RED NOTICE: A TRUE STORY OF HIGH FINANCE, MURDER AND ONE MAN'S STORY FOR JUSTICE": Thank you.

BALDWIN: Let's begin with the punishment over the poisoning and jailing of Navalny. These sanctions. Biden is obviously handling Putin much differently than his predecessor. How do you think Vladimir Putin will respond?

BROWDER: Well it really depends very much on who gets sanctioned. At the moment, Alexey Navalny has made it very clear personally who he wants sanctioned. He's saying that if they just go after the mid-level guys it's not going to have any effect on Vladimir Putin. And so what needs to be done is to go after the cashiers, the billionaire trustees of Vladimir Putin.

And if that happens, then Putin will take it very badly because Putin's a very rich man. He holds his money in the West, and he doesn't hold it personally. It's held by these cashiers or oligarch trustees.

BALDWIN: So that then would be -- would lead to potential, real ramifications it sounds like beyond the Navalny poisoning, Bill, the Biden White House is also preparing sanctions over the SolarWinds cyber-espionage campaign, which they characterize -- this is back in January -- they said it was a quote, intelligence-gathering effort.

The Biden administration is pushing the idea that, you know, what Russia did with SolarWinds goes beyond the usual spy game. My question is just why and how?

BROWDER: Well so, Russia -- I should say Putin, not Russia. But Putin is in the business of just pushing all boundaries, and if he can get away with stuff, if he can do things and succeed then he will carry on doing it.

And remember, Putin hacked the 2016 election, 17 intelligence agencies all confirmed it and there were no consequences. And so Putin then upped his game and went after the -- effectively after the entire U.S. infrastructure and the SolarWinds hack is part of that.

And Putin will continue to do these things unless we push back hard. And what needs to happen is hopefully what will happen, which will be punishing sanctions and things we don't even know about, where there's a real serious cyber retaliation.

And that point Putin will then have to weigh up the risks and rewards of doing it again in the future and hopefully the risks be so high that whatever rewards he gets won't be worth it.

BALDWIN: When you look, Bill, just sort of the menu of options that this White House would have against the Kremlin -- yes, we talked about sanctions. But if there was one thing based on your wealth of knowledge of Russia and Putin, what would you like to see the Biden White House do?

BROWDER: Well in my mind, the thing that's most obvious is that Putin is a kleptocrat, he's stolen hundreds of billions of dollars from the Russian people. He keeps that money in the West. And as I said before, he keeps that money with these oligarch trustees.

And if we were -- the West, not just the United States but the European Union, the U.K., Canada, if everybody works together and they go after the oligarch trustees, they go after these cashiers of Vladimir Putin, that would hit him where it counts. I would hit him with the thing that he values most, which is his ill-gotten gains that he thought were safe overseas.

And if we did that, he would have to seriously consider all the maligned activities he's planning for the future.

BALDWIN: Bill Browder, thank you so much. Come back. Good to have you on.

BROWDER: Thank you. BALDWIN: As soon as tomorrow we could learn new details about who was behind the murder of "Washington Post" journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Three sources familiar with the plan tell CNN the U.S. intelligence community will soon give Congress its long awaited unclassified report on the 2018 murder. The CIA assessed with high confidence that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had personally ordered the killing. But no intelligence officials have spoken publicly or presented evidence.

Also the House Oversight Committee heard testimony today on ways to stabilize the budget of the U.S. Postal Service. It's not just declining first-class mail hurting the USPS's bottom line but also a requirement passed by Congress that they fund retiree health benefits decades in advance.

The committee is considering legislation that could help. Today Postmaster General Louis DeJoy apologized again for slow mail during the peak holiday season, calling it unacceptable.

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LOUIS DEJOY, U.S. POSTMASTER GENERAL: We must acknowledge that during this peak season, we fell far short of meeting our service targets. Too many Americans were left waiting for weeks for important deliveries of mail and packages. This is unacceptable and I apologize to those customers who felt the impact of our delays.

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BALDWIN: Asked how long he was planning to stay at USPS, DeJoy told the House Oversight and Reform Committee quote, a long time, get used to me.

I'm Brooke Baldwin here in New York. Thank you so much for being with me, we'll you back here tomorrow.

[16:00:00]

"THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER" starts right now.