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New January 6 E-Mails Revealed; Interview With Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY); Tornado Recovery Efforts. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired December 13, 2021 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:36]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Hello, everyone. Welcome to NEWSROOM. I'm Alisyn Camerota.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: I'm Victor Blackwell.

Anderson Cooper is with us today. He's in hard-hit Mayfield, Kentucky. That's one of the cities with widespread destruction after dozens of tornadoes ripped through several states over the weekend.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Yes, Victor, Alisyn, the death toll here in Kentucky is now at 64.

The governor made that announcement a short time ago. Officials do expect that number to rise. The severe weather also killed more than a dozen people in Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, where six people died in the partial collapse of that Amazon facility.

Now, parts of Kentucky are now really unrecognizable after what the governor believes is the longest tornado in U.S. history. It touched down for four hours, demolishing homes in this state and businesses.

You can hear the crews already trying to clean up this area downtown in Mayfield. President Biden is going to tour some of this destruction Wednesday. And Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear was visibly shaken by what has happened across his state in the past three days.

Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. ANDY BESHEAR (D-KY): Just a few more facts about those we have we have lost; 18 are still unidentified. Of the ones that we know, the age -- the age range is 5 months to 86 years. And six are younger than 18.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: The youngest victim 5 years (sic) old.

I will speak to the governor live in just a few moments. We will talk to him from here. Officials estimate there are 105 Kentuckians still unaccounted for. One of the locations being searched right now is just a few miles from where I'm standing. These are satellite images of the Mayfield Consumer Products candle

factory before the tornado hit and then after.

CNN's Brian Todd just came from the candle factory. He joins us now.

So, Brian, the governor says that they have found eight people dead, eight are still missing from that location. What more are you hearing?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right, Anderson. Those the figures we know now.

And we just got briefed by some first responders at that candle factory site. The same numbers hold, eight deceased confirmed, eight still unaccounted for. There were about 110 people in the building when it collapsed. So the good news is that 94 people at least got out alive.

We were just briefed on the entire rescue situation by some emergency management people. We spoke to E.J. Meiman. He's the executive director of the Louisville Emergency Management Agency. He talked about some of the dangers that they faced early on when they first got there. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

E.J. MEIMAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LOUISVILLE EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY: Through that first afternoon, site security was a big problem.

I can't say enough about the National Guard and local law enforcement that came in to help us secure this site. We had onlookers. We had family. We had a lot of people trying to come on site and offer services. You can see that the dangers of the site. This is an active situation, even from your walk in.

There was debris in the road. Again, there's a lot of safety hazards here, so we couldn't just let anyone into the site.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TODD: Now, we pressed officials there, is there any chance of some -- finding someone There still alive? They said, frankly, we don't know.

But this is still an ongoing rescue operation. And we just came from there to here to downtown Mayfield, not far from where you are, Anderson. Just take a look at the landscape here. The devastation here is incredible. You have also got people streaming into town trying to find what's left of homes and businesses, so you have got traffic jams.

One lady just stopped and asked us where she could find some water, and we directed her to a church nearby. But, look, you have got devastation over here. Look at the way that building just collapsed there.

As far as that candle factory, we were told that they did -- they think they did have a plan for people to take refuge there, but the nature of the devastation was such that whatever plan they might have had in place, no matter how good it would have been, that may not have prevented the loss of life there, Anderson.

COOPER: Yes, the extent, Brian, of the damage here in Mayfield, it is really stunning.

You come over a little hill from the highway, and all of a sudden you just see it, and it's block after block after block.

[14:05:01]

Brian, we will check in with you throughout the day.

A tornado ripped apart hundreds of homes and businesses in Bowling Green, Kentucky, north of where we are right now. At least a dozen people in and around that city have died. There are early projections that the tornado was going at about 155 miles an hour when it hit there.

You see the damage it did their street by street.

CNN's Nick Valencia is in Bowling Green.

Nick, I know you have some survivors with you.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, remarkable stories of survival here.

And we wanted to take you inside one of these homes, Anderson.

Frank and Vickie Withrow, they have so gracious to invite us into their homes here.

Frank, you want to take me in here and tell me what you experienced going through here?

FRANK WITHROW JR., TORNADO SURVIVOR: Yes.

When it first hit, she was, like, in the bathroom. And me, I was -- we're in the backroom here.

VALENCIA: Yes, and you saw -- you said you saw your wall just rip off.

WITHROW: I was right here where the light switch was and before you know it I heard, I felt the door come -- it was like it was kicked in.

VALENCIA: And this is your living room that we're looking at there?

WITHROW: This is the living room. Over on your left is the kitchen. And the kitchen door came in first, and then the next thing I know here comes the wall.

VALENCIA: And you were exposed as the roof is ripping off, you were telling me. Was there -- what was going on in your mind as you're seeing this happen?

WITHROW: As I'm trying to get to the bathroom to Vickie, I'm thinking, am I going to make it? What is happening here? It was like movies that I have seen before.

VALENCIA: And you're moving slow because you have an injury here, a cane here.

WITHROW: Yes.

VALENCIA: Vickie, you're in the bathroom here.

Just take us through, Vickie. You're -- so you had taken cover first and were trying to convince Frank to come through here to the bathroom here. Come on through here.

VICKIE BOARDS, JR., TORNADO SURVIVOR: This is where I was at, in this tub here.

I had my pillow. I heard vibration and a lot of rumbling and the tub was vibrating and I just covered up and prayed and...

VALENCIA: And the roof is exposed above you as well.

BOARDS: As I was in the tub, it was falling on me, hitting me everywhere. But, yes, I made it. And...

VALENCIA: How do you think you made it? You said you were praying? What were you praying for?

BOARDS: Just to survive, yes.

VALENCIA: So many of your neighbors didn't make it. This subdivision got hit so hard.

(CROSSTALK)

BOARDS: Finally, when Frank was able to get in here, he fell to the floor here and he was injured, bleeding. And so he got up, because, as you can see here, we're pretty outside.

VALENCIA: We're going to continue to talk to you, but we have to throw it back because the governor is waiting to talk to Anderson Cooper.

But we're so grateful for you time.

BOARDS: OK. OK.

VALENCIA: Frank and Vickie are one of the lucky ones in the community, Anderson.

The death toll is expected to change here, so far 12 deaths -- Anderson.

COOPER: Yes, so much destruction here. Nick, appreciate it. I'm joined now by the governor of Kentucky, Governor Andy Beshear.

Governor, appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.

You spoke earlier this morning about the victims here, 5 months old, the youngest victim. What is the most urgent need right now?

BESHEAR: Well, we continue to need the support, the love and the prayers of everybody out there.

We are continuing to go, well, door to door or at least block to block, as, again, we don't -- don't have a lot of standing doors to look for people, to find those unaccounted for.

So one thing that we need is for family members of those that are missing to make sure that you reach out. We may need a DNA sample and the information that would help us identify your family member, about 105 people that we know that are unaccounted for. But, again, if you are missing a relative, we do need to know about it.

We're working on housing right now. We have had now 65 people who have lost their lives in this event that we can confirm. But we have thousands of others that are without their homes.

So we have opened up or state parks. We have asked for volunteers to help there. But it is -- this is just the beginning. This is making sure people are alive, making sure people are warm.

But we still have a lot of rebuilding ahead of us too. It's going to be years and we need this country to stick with us. Thank you to everybody for your love. It is been amazing, the outpouring of support. Just keep it up, not just today and tomorrow and this week and this month, but until these people like Frank and Vickie have a living room again.

COOPER: Yes.

So 64 was the death toll earlier when you spoke today. You're now saying it is 65?

BESHEAR: Yes.

COOPER: So that has gone up.

The 105 who you say are still unaccounted for in this state, a number of those could possibly be people who have just not checked in or not been able to check in with a loved one or a family just doesn't know the location; is that right?

[14:10:05]

BESHEAR: Absolutely. We're now at 65.

Actually, we lost somebody in Franklin County, where I live, who worked actually as a contractor in this government complex, who went off the road during the storm. And I remember I was at emergency operations center calling my kids to get them in the basement, knowing how bad even all of the way up here we were going to get to get hit.

The 105 -- we know there will be more fatalities. It will end up exceeding 70, probably closer to 80. We pray that that will be the end of it. It's really hard.

COOPER: President Biden just spoke about what people in your state are going through.

I just want to play some of that and get your reaction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's just devastating.

And so -- and I worry, quite frankly, about -- how can I say it? The mental health of these people. You come home, and you see that, if you made it, and if you haven't -- if you lost someone in the meantime.

That's what worries me most, the uncertainty. And it really is something that I have observed in every major disaster I have watched and been on the ground to see. It is just is -- you can see it in people's faces.

So we just want them to know we're going to stay as long as it takes to help them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: I know you said you have opened up state parks for people. There are churches working here to help people, neighbors taking in neighbors.

What are the concerns just long-term, because, often, as you know, as you said, a lot people pay attention to the short-term, but this -- the pain, the rebuilding, it's going to take a long time.

BESHEAR: It is.

And, first, let me say, Jake (AUDIO GAP) emergency (AUDIO GAP) declaration faster than ever in history. And we have FEMA people on the ground helping process people's claims as early as today. And, again, that has never happened.

So, as a state and as a people, we are grateful. He's also right that this is traumatic. It is traumatic especially for people who live in these communities. It is traumatic for their families who either lost someone or spent hours working (AUDIO GAP) losing someone.

And, Anderson, you're there. It is traumatic to stand in (AUDIO GAP) city and to look 10, 12, 14 blocks, and nothing, nothing over half-a- story is still standing. And we're used to tornado that rip off the roofs of our houses, and this one exploded every house that was in its path for a 200-mile swathe of destruction. It -- there is no lens. There is no lens big enough to show people

just how awful it is. And you go through -- you go through shock and disbelief and numbness and then back to being resolute, and then you do it all over again.

But I will say, we're good people. We love one another. We open our homes to each other. We opened 11 shelters. Only six are still open because the moment somebody would get power, there are four families that are invited in.

And we will make it through this and we will rebuild. And I'm proud of my people. We have been through a pandemic, a record ice storm, flooding, and now this in a two-year period. But we're strong enough. We will grieve together. We will clean up together and we are going to rebuild together.

COOPER: That is what you see already here in Mayfield. There are people behind us here. This was a church parking lot. There are people now gathering things that they can possibly salvage.

This community is -- it's certainly on bended knee, but it is still standing.

BESHEAR: Well, and, just yesterday we were able to start moving simply from clearing the roads to actual debris removal.

And there is something hopeful in that, the fact that some of this pain and destruction gets lifted up and moved out, and maybe that creates ground for us to make something new.

In the long run, we have got to rebuild thousands of house and homes. People are going to need our help. Just simply an insurance claim and a check does not, does not make you whole for all that has been lost.

The outpouring support, though, from the country has been incredible in terms of dollars and donations and volunteers. We feel the love in Kentucky.

[14:15:04]

And we thank the rest of this country for being there in one of our biggest times of need and of grief and of trauma.

COOPER: You know, just finally, the president intends, I believe, to come here Wednesday. He made a point to say he didn't want to come if it would interfere with any kind of operations going on.

What is your hope for his visit?

BESHEAR: Well, first, we're going to thank him for moving faster than we have ever seen to get unprecedented resources.

And then we're going to take him both to Mayfield and then to my dad's hometown, Dawson Springs. Now, people see Mayfield, where you are. Dawson Springs is a town of 2, 700. Two-thirds of the town is gone. You can stand on my grandparents' porch. They passed away many years ago, but one block up, everything is gone for miles in each direction, just nothing, nothing standing.

How do you obliterate a full town? And I know he wants to see it firsthand. But, certainly, we have been getting every single request filled by the federal government. And that is just not being expressed by me, but by Senator McConnell, Senator Paul, our entire congressional delegation. So we are -- we're very thankful for this federal government.

COOPER: And I know, just finally, you have set up a relief fund. Where could people go?

BESHEAR: That is the Western Kentucky Tornado Relief Fund. That is WK -- it's teamwkyrelieffund.ky.gov. That is connected to state. We're going to take zero dollars in administrative fees.

All of it is going to the people of Western Kentucky and to fill the holes, not just now, but until they have got four walls up, until they have got their family in there for next holiday that they can celebrate. And we're working on that right now.

And, tomorrow, we're going to turn toward making sure these kids can still have a Christmas. We're working on hosting it at a couple of our state parks. And we will reach out for help there. What should be a joyous part of December is very tough on a lot of families. We're going to do our best to lift them up.

COOPER: Yes, definitely a tough Christmas for a lot of kids.

Governor Andy Beshear, I appreciate your time tonight. Thank you so much.

BESHEAR: Thank you, Anderson.

COOPER: If you would like to help the tornado victims, we also have a list additional organizations that are on the ground. You can find it at CNN.com/Impact -- Victor and Alisyn, back to you.

CAMEROTA: OK, Anderson, thank you very much. We will check back with you shortly.

You can hear how emotional the governor there is, how shattered he is having to talk about the victims and how many people are still missing and how long people will be homeless and how much help they're going to need from the country he said for years.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

And you look at -- often, with tornadoes, a tornado will touch down and destroy one home and not touch the neighbor's house, but where he stands, where Anderson is, you could look for block after block after block and all of it, all of it is destroyed.

CAMEROTA: We will go back there throughout the program.

But we do want to bring you an update on the investigation into the January 6 insurrection. The House select committee is expected to vote today to recommend holding Mark Meadows in criminal context of Congress. So the committee is also releasing new details from the Meadows' e-mail exchanges, including one that said the National Guard would -- quote -- "protect pro-Trump people."

BLACKWELL: And we're getting new insight into how much vaccines protect against the Omicron variant. We have got new details ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:23:20]

BLACKWELL: Later today, the January 6 Committee is expected to vote to recommend that former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with its subpoena.

Now, the committee believes Meadows is a key insurrection witness and is releasing evidence to support its case.

CAMEROTA: It includes an e-mail Meadows sent the day before the riot saying the National Guard would be present to -- quote -- "protect pro-Trump people" and that many more would be on standby.

CNN's Ryan Nobles joins us now from Capitol Hill.

So, Ryan, what have you learned that's in there?

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's interesting, Victor and Alisyn, because we know that Mark Meadows handed the committee over some 6,000 documents during that short period of time where he was cooperating with the committee.

And that's one of the reasons the committee is so insistent that he get in front of them and answer questions as part of a deposition, because they want to learn more about some of this communication.

And when Meadows resisted that opportunity to sit down and talk, that's when they began these contempt proceedings. And what they have been doing is just putting out little bits of details from these communications that give us some insight into Meadows' role in what happened on January 6, like this, for instance.

According to the contempt report that they will vote on tonight, Mr. Meadows -- quote -- "received text messages and e-mails regarding apparent efforts to encourage Republican legislators in certain states to send alternate slates of electors to Congress, a plan which one member of Congress acknowledged was highly controversial, to which Meadows responded, 'I love it.'"

Now, as we have said before, that e-mail that you mentioned referencing the National Guard, this particular text exchange with a member of Congress. Of course, there is that PowerPoint presentation which is getting a lot of attention, which discussed options for intervening in the certification of the election results.

[14:25:08] These are all things the committee wants to know more about. And there's presumably a lot more information that they haven't revealed to the public. It could be all part of this contempt report. We could learn more information tonight when they vote to refer Meadows for -- to the full House for criminal content.

So what I'm saying here, Victor and Alisyn, is that we're just scratching the surface when it comes to this showdown between Mark Meadows and the January 6 Select Committee.

CAMEROTA: OK, Ryan Nobles, thank you for sharing the reporting with us.

Let's bring in Elliot Williams. He's a CNN legal analyst and a former federal prosecutor.

Elliot, before we get to whether or not he will be held in criminal contempt, a la Steve Bannon, can I just ask you about what Ryan just read to us? That passage from the report, from the committee that, on November 7, so right after the election, and two months before the insurrection, he's exchanging e-mails, Mark Meadows is, that is an apparent effort to encourage Republican legislators in certain states to send alternate slates of electors to Congress, in other words, ones that will deliver the desired outcome, and disenfranchise millions of voters.

And Meadows' response, according to this report is: "I love it. And, yes, have a team on it."

Could he be in trouble for those things, separate and apart from no longer cooperating with the committee?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Here's the thing.

Even if he's not in trouble, notice that these aren't communications he's having with the president of the United States. And so this idea that all of his statements were protected by executive privilege, and therefore he can't testify before the committee about them falls apart.

He's having these conversations with third parties, with state elected officials and other individuals, sometimes using a private cell phone. So you can see right through this tactic of claiming that, well, because these were protected communications of conversations you had with the president.

He's either just not being candid or dishonest or just trying to avoid appearing before the committee. That's what I see, which is just an effort to evade sitting down and talking to the committee.

BLACKWELL: So there's this letter, I guess it's a last-ditch attempt from Meadows' attorney that was sent, in which they asked the committee not to move forward with this vote on holding him in criminal contempt, or at least a referral.

And they wrote here, the attorney wrote that the refusal to be deposed is an attempt to comply with his legal obligations, as former adviser to then President Donald Trump, and -- quote -- "History and the law teach that this attempt is not a crime."

You say that the report was smartly written to try to get around or refute that. Explain that.

WILLIAMS: Right.

What the report points out are all -- like sort of like I talked about a second ago, all of the instances where he's not talking to the president, but is making these statements to third parties and elsewhere.

Look, as a former White House chief of staff, if he were having serious conversations with the president of the United States, of course, many of those would be protected. But when you're talking about, number one, the 6,000 pages of documents that Ryan had identified, number two, like Alisyn had noted, the "I love it" and I have got a team on it and so on, number three communications with state election officials and on down, these are just not statements that would ever be protected.

And so what the committee does is lay out his pattern of noncompliance with the committee's subpoena on all of those, making the case that what he's doing is not complying. And so, at a certain point, he either needed to come in and testify as to those matters and say, look, there are some things I can't talk about. What he's done is make it just a blanket denial to come in.

And that may meet the standard for a criminal contempt charge.

CAMEROTA: So will it? I mean, will the DOJ follow the same pattern they did with Steve Bannon, do you think, ultimately, and hold him in criminal contempt?

WILLIAMS: Here's the hard thing, Alisyn. It's just a different matter when you're dealing with the White House chief of staff.

So, like we were talking about, they carve it up a little bit differently in this report, making the case that there are a few statements and a few different types of communications where, yes, he's misbehaving. But, at the end of the day, he's just in a different place, where Bannon from day one made clear that he was not going to comply.

Mark Meadows did comply, at least for part of the time and then changed his mind. Now, if you are the Justice Department, you have to be able to say, if we brought this contempt charge in front of a jury, we know we'd win. And I'm not convinced that it's a slam dunk that the Justice Department wins, just because of Meadows' more complicated relationship.

It could go either way. But it's just not as straightforward as it was with Bannon. It just isn't.

BLACKWELL: All right, this vote could be just a few hours away, so maybe we will learn more.

Elliot Williams, thank you.

WILLIAMS: Thanks, Victor. Take care, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Thank you.

BLACKWELL: Health officials in the U.K. say the Omicron variant is spreading at a phenomenal rate. What this could signal for the winter surge here in the U.S.

CAMEROTA: And we're going to take you back to Kentucky for the latest on the search-and-rescue efforts in the aftermath of these historic tornadoes.

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