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Maricopa County Supervisor Gates is Interviewed about Arizona's Audit; Migrants Avoid Capture at Arizona-Mexico Border; Supreme Court to Hear Abortion Case. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired May 18, 2021 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:31:13]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: A GOP-led board of election officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, says enough is enough, and they are blasting Republican state senators over their support of a controversial, very partisan so-called audit, another one, taking place all based on the president's big lie about the election.

In a blistering letter, the board tells Republican state senators -- really tells their fellow Republicans, quote, your so-called audit demonstrates to the world that the Arizona senate is only interested in feeding the various festering conspiracy theories that fuel the fundraising schemes of those pulling your strings. You have rented out the once good name of the Arizona state senate to grifters and con- artists.

Wow. Quite a statement.

Maricopa County supervisor, Republican Bill Gates, who signed that letter added this last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL GATES (R), MARICOPA COUNTY SUPERVISOR: I want to be clear that I believe that Joe Biden won the election, all right. And the reason that I feel confident in saying that, particularly in Maricopa County, is that we overturned every stone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Well, Bill Gates joins me now.

Thank you very much for being with me this morning.

This is the letter, this is the response letter. I read through it this morning. And it -- I mean it's stunning because the accusation that she has made against you guys are also stunning, including deleting entire files of voters. I want to get your reaction to what we heard -- my colleague, Erin

Burnett, heard last night from your friend and colleague, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, to these accusations from her.

Here he was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN RICHER (R), MARICOPA COUNTY RECORDER: I was just sitting there looking at our voter registration database and I have the elections database as well on my computer. And just, what can we do here? I mean, this is -- this is tantamount to saying that the pencil sitting on my desk in front of me doesn't exist.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: He's also a Republican. You're a Republican. She's a Republican. What do you say to Arizona State Senate President Karen Fann?

BILL GATES (R), MARICOPA COUNTY SUPERVISOR: Well, I agree completely with Recorder Richer. I mean what's happening here is these allegations, which are being made by known partisans, the Cyber Ninjas and their other subcontractors, are simply not true.

And they're making these accusations about good people, elections workers, people who have worked for years in our elections department. They don't have an agenda other than making sure that this election is done properly. But they've made these accusations, and they don't know what they're talking about.

HARLOW: I mean you say this is beyond not knowing what they're talking about. You have written recently that this is a battle to save our Republic. And I think what you're getting at here, Bill, is that it's not just elected officials who, frankly, know better or should know better, it's voters who really believe it, like this voter who just recently spoke to our colleague Kyung Lah.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Do you think that Donald Trump won Arizona?

ELOUISE FLAGG, AUDIT WORKER: Yes, I do. I think that Donald Trump won the election. Firm believer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: So how do you convince her and so many like her in your state?

GATES: Well, and here's the problem, I think. Unfortunately, a lot of my fellow Republicans have done what is easy and not what is right. It's easy to simply feed into this and say, you know what, yes, maybe there's something at issue here. Maybe the election really didn't turn out the way that they're saying that it did. But what we're focused on in Maricopa County is doing what is right.

[09:35:00]

And we've looked at this. Like I, you know, mentioned in the clip you had there, we've looked at everything. We asked all the tough questions and the reality is that Joe Biden won Maricopa County. But we've got to start speaking truth to folks. We have to say, these are the results. I mean this has gone through the courts over and over again and been re-litigated.

So what we need to do now is accept that and start to move forward as Republicans, start to make the case for why we should be elected in 2022. But, unfortunately, we're hung up in 2020 right now.

HARLOW: You've talked about the danger to the country and Liz Cheney thinks something like the insurrection on January 6th could happen again, right, real, real violence and people killed.

How do you -- how do you know it's not too late to prevent that again, right? I mean how do you get more voices on your side in this?

GATES: So here's what I think on that. I believe that there are many Republican elected officials who feel like we did, that they haven't spoken up yet. And I give credit to Liz Cheney for speaking up. And I think it's saying to other Republican elected officials, it's OK to speak the truth.

I'm so proud of all the elected officials in Maricopa County, mainly Republicans, who stood behind us yesterday, supporting us, supporting the elections officials. But if no one is speaking up, then this will be accepted. And then our democracy will be in peril. I don't say those words lightly, but that's where we are at now.

HARLOW: Well, let's hope something changes. We appreciate you speaking the truth and being here this morning. Thank you very much, Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates.

GATES: Thank you.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: The southern border crisis is not limited to Texas. Arizona is also seeing a huge increase of attempted crossings into the U.S. But these are a different group of migrants trying to get into the country in a different way. I recently joined Border Patrol agents on tracking operations along the Arizona/Mexico border. What we found there is coming up next.

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[09:41:37]

SCIUTTO: You've likely heard about a surge in migrants at the southern border, often involving families and unaccompanied children. But there is a second surge at a different part of the border in Arizona with a different kind of migrant. The bulk of encounters there are not families but individuals attempting to cross high mountain passes, often using military-style tactics. And they are overwhelming Border Patrol agents.

We got exclusive access to air and ground operations by the U.S. Border Patrol Tucson Sector and witnessed a growing, hard-fought and highly technical game of cat and mouse between the agents and the migrants.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO (voice over): Due south of Tucson, Arizona, one of the most treacherous stretches of the U.S./Mexico border, 262 miles of hot, dry, often mountainous terrain. And yet, more and more migrants are still coming north. Encounters in this sector are up more than 150 percent from last year. Detections by the border patrol's drones monitoring the area from up high have tripled. And migrants and smugglers are using new military-style tactics to avoid capture.

We joined agents from the U.S. Border Patrol Tucson Sector on operations tracking and apprehending migrants from Mexico, Central and South America. It is a challenging, highly technical and sometimes dangerous effort, encompassing helicopter patrols, unmanned aerial surveillance and Border Patrol agents on foot, ATVs and horseback.

Our chopper, piloted by Agent Alexis Clark (ph), gets a radio alert of migrants spotted attempting to cross a rocky ridgeline several thousand feet high. On foot, agents track the group searching for signs of disturbed ground. In the sky, our pilot circles the area to spot them from above.

N. MICHAEL MONTGOMERY, DIRECTOR, TUCSON AIR BRANCH: A group of two under a tree from the air is -- it's tough. So, you know, we have to look for that variation in clothing, a foot sticking out, some movement, just a good eye from an air crew just spot something that doesn't look right.

SCIUTTO: Within minutes, success. Agents discover a group of five men hiding under a tree and detain them.

SCIUTTO (on camera): One of the biggest challenges in terms of policing and patrolling this part of the border is that the migrants coming here, they don't want to be caught. They're not giving themselves up to get into the legal system in the U.S. They're trying to cross on their own, avoid Border Patrol along the way. So lots of times when they're spotted, they don't give themselves up, they run. And that makes the job of Border Patrol agents that much tougher.

SCIUTTO (voice over): These are not families and unaccompanied children. Border Patrol says 85 percent who cross here are single adults, some with criminal records. The crossings now resemble military operations. Migrants wear camouflage, boots made from carpet to obscure their footsteps, and crucially come across in multiple, small groups, dropped along the border, and told to enter at different times to out whit and overwhelm the Border Patrol.

SABRI DIKMAN, ACTING DEPUTY CHIEF PATROL AGENT, TUCSON SECTOR: What they're doing is we call it swarming. So instead of, in years gone by where we'd have a group of 20, a group of 30 crossing the border, currently we see two groups or ten groups of two.

[09:45:03]

And so what happens is they split up, they cross the border and it takes two agents or one agent to address each one of those individual groups. So we become task saturated.

SCIUTTO: Why the surge now? Many migrants believe, falsely, that U.S. law changed with the new administration.

JESUS VASAVILBASO, BORDER PATROL AGENT, TUCSON SECTOR: The laws for immigration have not changed, so our job has not changed. So we're still enforcing the same laws that we've been enforcing for many years.

SCIUTTO: Construction of new border wall, including the 137 miles built in this sector, has been halted, leaving wide gaps like this one.

SCIUTTO (on camera): This is part of the new border wall. It's 30 feet high, made out of steel. And this is the kind of barrier it replaced in a lot of sections of the border here, something just about waist high meant to stop cars, not people. Easy to get right under it.

So what's happened in sections like this that are incomplete is they've become new transit points. And you can tell that because the barbed wire here, bent up from the bottom, so you can crawl under it. Lots of footprints showing lots of foot traffic.

But we're also told that smugglers, they've even built a road here for better access to this entry point, making it even easier to cross.

SCIUTTO (voice over): So the bulk of the work remains with agents making capture operations like this one the Border Patrol's primary mission.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's walking towards the west.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So far I have so far is three confirmed on the images.

SCIUTTO: Underway, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, no break for weather or nightfall.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We can go this way.

SCIUTTO: We followed agents on a ground patrol after pressure sensors and cameras on a frequently used trail detected multiple migrants. It is a long, exhausting search. Temperatures near 100 degrees. Smugglers familiar with how to use the terrain to avoid detection.

SCIUTTO (on camera): I'm walking around here. I don't see how they follow the signs. I mean that takes enormous skill, doesn't it, particularly because of the carpet booties that they wear?

VASAVILBASO: Yes. It takes a special skill to be a lot of practice from Border Patrol agents to be able to master that, you know, and it takes hours sometimes. We can track groups for hours and -- but hopefully we'll be able to make this apprehension.

SCIUTTO (voice over): This time, agent lose the trail and air assets move on to another potential site.

On areal patrol once again, we get word that agents may have spotted another group of migrants closer to the border.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At your 10:00. And if this is them, which I think it is, they're headed west.

SCIUTTO: This group is proving extremely difficult to find, taking refuge in a dry riverbed to provide cover of trees and vegetation. This familiar tactic turns the agents once again into trackers, searching sand and gravel for footprints.

On searches like this one, they have some particularly helpful partners. A Belgian shepherd, one member of the BP's canine unit, and agents mounted on horseback, fast and durable in the mountains.

After nearly an hour in the air, ascending and descending the ridgeline at as low as 20 feet altitude, and hours of painstaking searching by agents on the ground --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, we got them.

SCIUTTO: They find their target, seven men in tell-tale camouflage.

This is the new reality, not one, but two surges on the southern border. In Texas, families and children often turning themselves in, and here in Arizona, single adults directed like soldiers doing all they can to avoid capture and come north.

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HARLOW: What a piece, Jim. I mean you mentioned these booties that they actually wear so that they can't be detected.

SCIUTTO: Yes. I mean, we have one here. We found it at the border, discarded at the border.

HARLOW: Oh, wow.

SCIUTTO: So you kind of -- you put them over your shoe and this is -- this is a carpet section.

HARLOW: Right.

SCIUTTO: The idea is that it -- you know, you're not leaving footprints. It kind of -- kind of wipes itself clean as you walk along.

And that's one of the things. I mean you saw in the pictures there, they will wear full camo. The terrain is really difficult there despite -- as I was looking at it from the air and even from the ground, I couldn't figure out how they were spotting anything, right?

HARLOW: Right.

SCIUTTO: I mean you've got to be trained to do it. It's not easy. And a lot get across. And the number is just overwhelming right now, I mean up, you know, spotting from the air, up triple this year, up to this point this year from last year.

HARLOW: I know they probably were hesitant to talk politics, Jim, but I don't know, did they -- you know, because there's been criticism that, you know, migrants have felt like they have more of an open door to come from the Biden administration, despite what the administration has said. Did they get into that at all?

SCIUTTO: They -- well, I asked them straight up multiple times.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: And there answer is, there is a perception, but a false one, that both the laws and their operations have changed with the new administration. They said, laws are the same and our operations are just as aggressive.

HARLOW: Yes. All right, great piece. Thank you, Jim.

We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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[09:54:12]

HARLOW: The Supreme Court has agreed to take up a major abortion case this fall that could directly challenge the landmark Roe versus Wade decision.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

At the heart of this case is a 2018 law in Mississippi that bans most abortions after 15 weeks with no exceptions even for rape or incest.

Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic, she's been covering this for a while.

Joan, I mean, this has been decades in the making by conservatives to get a makeup of the court now that might go a certain way on this, further complicating calls for Justice Breyer to retire before Republicans regain a majority.

So, walk us through all of this.

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Sure. Good morning, Jim and Poppy.

Justice Breyer is 82 years old. He's been on the court for 27 years. Liberals are clamoring for him to leave now with Democratic President Joe Biden in office and a Democratic Senate by only a one vote Democratic Senate because they don't want President Biden to be hemmed in, in any way, of his choice of a younger liberal to succeed Justice Breyer if he were to leave.

[09:55:18]

But, he's, you know, he is still contributing very much to the law in America. And one of his legacy areas, Jim, is exactly what you touched on there, it's abortion. For more than 20 years, he has been the author of major abortion rights rulings at the Supreme Court.

And the case that the justices agreed to hear in their announcement yesterday cuts to the heart of Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to have -- end a pregnancy before the fetus is viable, that is can live outside of the womb. And Justice Breyer would be tempted to stay, I would think, because of this case, but he's going to be weighing many factors over the next month or so to decide whether he will leave this summer or next. Either way, we have a whole new court, a conservative court, and Justice Breyer's vote still matters, but will he stay? We'll know soon.

SCIUTTO: Always drama up those steps in that courthouse.

Joan Biskupic, thanks very much.

BISKUPIC: Thanks.

SCIUTTO: Still ahead, the White House COVID response team holds its first briefing since the CDC released its new and for some confusing guidance on masks. Could we get some clarity on that? We're going to be live, next.

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