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Republican Congressman Declines to Speak With January 6 Committee; Omicron Now Dominant Variant in U.S.; President Biden to Deliver Address on COVID Fight. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired December 21, 2021 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:05]

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Hello again, and thanks for joining us. I'm Ana Cabrera, in for Victor and Alisyn today.

Soon, President Biden will address the nation on the rapidly researching COVID pandemic and how to mitigate this new threat of this new variant, Omicron. It is now the dominant strain here in the U.S., accounting for more than 73 percent of new cases.

CNN's chief national affairs correspondent, Jeff Zeleny, is live at the White House.

Jeff, we hear the president will have two different messages today, one for the vaccinated and one for the unvaccinated. What do we expect to hear?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Ana, certainly, President Biden drawing a big distinction between those who have been vaccinated and boosted and those who have not, and simply saying it is not going to be a repeat of March of 2020 for those who are vaccinated.

But for those who are not, that is not necessarily the case. But the president also is going to really be expressing a sense of urgency, far more so than in his winter plan that he rolled out just a couple weeks ago. And the White House is going to be talking about sending 500 million new test to the homes of Americans. But that is not coming until next month.

So this certainly is shining a light on one thing that has been a persistent challenge for this administration, testing and the availability of testing. Now demand is outpacing supply on that front, the president also, we're told, going to be outlining how 1,000 military members, medical professionals will be at the ready to go to hospitals across the country, trying to relieve the burdened staff there, as well as talking about setting up new federal testing sites beginning in New York City.

This is just all part of the strategy the president will be laying out in the coming hour, when he delivers a speech from the State Dining Room here at the White House, really trying to really give a stark warning about what's to come, but also try and reassure a worried public some four days before Christmas that this is a pandemic that is out of control, certainly, but for those vaccinated and boosted, there certainly are many reasons to be thankful for in that regard.

So he will be using this speech as another attempt to urge people to get those vaccinations here during this holiday surge, Ana.

CABRERA: And this new threat hits close to home, as the White House just revealed a mid-level staff member who was a close contact of the president tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday morning.

What do we know about the president's possible exposure here?

ZELENY: We do know that the president tested negative for COVID-19 yesterday, we are told by the White House press secretary, and he will take a PCR test again tomorrow.

Of course, he tests regularly here. So this is all coming from a trip on Friday, where a staffer of the White House spent about 30 minutes or so with the president, we're told, on Air Force One after the president traveled to South Carolina. And the staffer at the time tested negative. You must test negative to be anywhere around the same room as the president, tested negative at the time, but then over the weekend have some mild symptoms and later tested positive.

So, Ana, like every workplace in America, perhaps like every family in America, everyone seems to know someone who has tested positive, no exception here at the White House, but for now the president testing negative, at least as of yesterday, and again scheduled to get another test tomorrow on -- Ana.

CABRERA: OK, Jeff Zeleny at the White House for us, thank you.

ZELENY: Sure.

CABRERA: Omicron is spreading so fast that new modeling from the CDC suggests we will likely see even higher case rates than previous peaks, despite higher rates of vaccination.

The U.S. has also now confirmed its first known death from the Omicron variant. An unvaccinated Texas man with underlying health issues died after contracting this virus a second time.

CNN's Athena Jones has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, CHIEF MEDICAL ADVISER TO PRESIDENT BIDEN: We have really not seen anything like this before.

DR. MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, DIRECTOR, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH: It's not looking good. It's a real perfect storm, unfortunately, of events.

ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The CDC estimates the Omicron variant now accounts for 73 percent of new COVID-19 infections, a stunning leap in prevalence less than three weeks after it was first detected in the U.S. OSTERHOLM: I think Omicron is going to be a national viral blizzard.

For the next three to eight weeks, I think we are going to be in a very, very difficult place.

JONES: Hospitalizations are up 35 percent over a month ago. The U.S. now averages nearly 140,000 new COVID cases a day, and more than 1,200 people are dying each day on average.

And even as early indications suggest Omicron may cause milder illness than the Delta variant and be less likely to cause severe lung disease, the sheer number of COVID cases could overwhelm already stretched hospitals.

OSTERHOLM: I think we're going to see a real challenge in our health care systems over the course of the next three to eight weeks. And what really is challenging is, on top of that, we can expect 10 to 30 percent of health care workers to get infected during that time.

JONES: Doctors stressing, people who have not been vaccinated are most at risk. For the vaccinated, getting boosted reduces your risk further.

[14:05:04]

JUDGE LINA HIDALGO, HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS: We just had our first Omicron-related death.

JONES: The first person confirmed to have died of Omicron, a Texas man in man in his 50s who was unvaccinated, had previously been infected with COVID, and had underlying health conditions.

Still, doctors say everyone should do what they can to avoid getting infected.

FAUCI: Well, it is ill-advised to be cavalier about it and say, well, who cares if I get infected, not only for your own health and those around you, but for your community responsibility of not wanting to be a vehicle to spread it to someone else.

JONES: While just over 61 percent of the country is fully vaccinated, less than 20 percent has gotten a booster shot, even as a "New England Journal of Medicine" study says people vaccinated more than six months ago were more than three times more likely to have a breakthrough case of COVID than those inoculated more recently.

One potentially positive sign?

MICHAEL J. DOWLING, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NORTHWELL HEALTH: We have right now about 460 patients in our hospitals. That's less than 10 percent of our overall capacity.

JONES: While New York is setting daily records for new COVID infections, it is not yet seeing a corresponding increase in hospitalizations.

DOWLING: This time last year, during the second wave, we had almost 1,000 cases, this time last year. And compared to where we were back in the first wave, we had 3,500 patients in our hospitals.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JONES: And here in New York City, a big focus on boosters, Mayor Bill de Blasio announcing today a $100 incentive for any city resident who gets a COVID-19 booster shot at a city-run vaccination site.

Now, this booster bonus incentive program starts today and goes through the end of the month -- Ana.

CABRERA: Athena Jones, thank you.

And here with us now, CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger and Dr. Peter Hotez, professor and dean of tropical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

So I will start with you, Gloria, as we are waiting the president's speech here coming up this hour, we expect. We're two years now into this pandemic. Many people are frustrated by yet another surge here at the holidays.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.

CABRERA: How hard of a challenge is this new surge, do you think, for the Biden administration?

BORGER: Well, look, it's a very difficult challenge.

First of all, a majority of American public, 54 percent, thinks that Joe Biden has done a good job on managing COVID. And now comes Omicron. And he has to give a speech that talks to two different audiences, as you were pointing out earlier.

He has to talk to the people who have done the right thing and who have been vaccinated and who had been boosted. And he has to say to them, this isn't going to be as bad for you. This is not going to be a lockdown. You just have to be cautious. You have to be careful.

But those who are unvaccinated, those who have decided to go in the other direction, he is going to say to them, be very afraid, because this is going to be a dark winter for you. This is going to be dangerous if you have no immunity to it at all. So you better get vaccinated.

It's difficult to give a speech where you have to be optimistic to some people and pessimistic to other people. But he's got to make that message clear, which is, you got to have a vaccine. That's it.

CABRERA: Dr. Peter Hotez, what do you think this administration could do differently moving forward? What do you want to hear from the president?

DR. PETER HOTEZ, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Well, I think Gloria is absolutely right. We are we are two different nations and very much divided along partisan lines with what we're feeling about COVID-19. And it is a complicated message. But here's the reality. The man who

died last night here in Houston was unvaccinated, previously infected. There's the buzz out there that, if you're previously infected, you don't need to get vaccinated. It's not true, and especially with Omicron, where, in South Africa, we have seen so many reinfections.

So the bottom line is, if you're unvaccinated, whether you were infected or not, you need to get fully vaccinated. We also need to change what it means to be fully vaccinated, because the new data coming out of Imperial College London is showing that if you only get two doses of the vaccine, of either the mRNA vaccine, at least for the Pfizer, that it basically has no protection against symptomatic COVID infection, some modest protection against serious illness.

That's why you need the booster. But then here's the hardest message of all that the president is going to have, in that, even if you -- when you get boosted, you get a big bump in your virus-neutralizing antibodies, it will protect you against hospitalization and serious illness, but, within a month or two, a couple of months after you get that booster, it only protects about 30 to 40 percent against symptomatic infection.

[14:10:08]

And that's going to be a particular problem among the health care providers who are among the first to adopt the booster. They're already a couple of months out. And that's where we're going to get that big dropout in the health care work force because of so much breakthrough symptomatic COVID, not that they're being hospitalized themselves, but they're home sick with COVID and dropping out of the work force.

CABRERA: Right.

HOTEZ: How do you manage that? How do we keep this health system together over the next -- as Mike Osterholm's three to eight weeks as his time frame? And that's going to be our biggest challenge?

CABRERA: Well, let me play for you what Dr. Fauci has suggested, because if there is an increase in infections among health care workers, it's what do you do then, right? And even if these health care workers are asymptomatic, but test positive, maybe there should be a change to whether they are in isolation or in quarantine for the duration that is currently 10 days.

Could that be shortened? Dr. Fauci suggests maybe that's something to consider. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FAUCI: If you do have someone who's infected, rather than keeping them out for seven to 10 days, if they are without symptoms, put an N95 mask on and make sure they have the proper PPE, then they might be able to get back to work sooner than the full length of the quarantine period.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Dr. Hotez, is that a solution or is that risky?

HOTEZ: Well, there is risk. It may have merit to it. I know Mike Osterholm has also made that suggestion, as have others.

I have -- I think that's worth considering. I have proposed something different altogether, which is that, because of that waning immunity, if we could give the health care providers a second booster dose, meaning a fourth immunization, that will restore that level of virus- neutralizing antibody, and keep them protected for a short period of time, for a couple of months over this Omicron surge.

So, that so that would be a very interesting use of the vaccine, because, remember, we don't have a lot of other tools. At least one, maybe two of the monoclonal antibodies now is not working against the Omicron variant because of the spike protein mutations.

And, also, we're not going to have Paxlovid. So we really have to maximize what we have. And I have proposed to give a second booster to the health care providers to keep them in the work force during this very difficult time.

CABRERA: Gloria, vaccinations have become so politicized. We even heard people booing when President Trump recently said he had gotten boosted, and he was among his own supporters.

Given the politicization here, does it help or hurt when President Biden makes a speech?

BORGER: Well, it's hard to say whether it's going to change anyone's mind.

People who don't believe Joe Biden are not going to believe Joe Biden, but that doesn't mean the president ought not to give the speech. I mean, I think he's -- he needs to scare people straight. He needs to scare people who haven't been vaccinated and say, look, this is -- this could happen to you, what happened in Houston, what Dr. Hotez is talking about, could happen to you.

I think the thing that Biden has to make clear today also, which the United States has not excelled in, is getting tests to people. And they are going to announce a huge number of tests, half-a-billion tests that will be made available. You will be able to go online and get them in about a month or so, free of charge, so that you can test at home.

But this is something we should have been doing for quite some time. And I think regulatory issues have kept that from occurring. Now we have no other choice, particularly since people who have been vaccinated and boosted may not get a difficult case, may not even know they have any kind of COVID.

And if they were to test themselves at home, they would know and they would be able then to stay at home and not pass it along to other people. So, it is so important that we get these tests in circulation in this country in huge quantities, and I think the president's going to talk about that. And, hopefully, the plan will work. We just don't know.

CABRERA: Gloria Borger, Dr. Peter Hotez, thank you both.

BORGER: Sure.

CABRERA: Again, the president expected to address the nation here this hour. Stay with us for that.

Meantime, Republican Congressman Scott Perry says he will not meet with the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot. So will the committee subpoena a sitting member of Congress?

And Democrats are back at a drawing board. They're meeting tonight to figure out what's next for Biden's Build Back Better legislation after Senator Manchin tanked it.

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[14:19:13]

CABRERA: New developments today in the investigation into the Capitol insurrection.

Republican Congressman Scott Perry has now declined a request to voluntarily speak with the January 6 House select committee. The Pennsylvania Republican is the first sitting member of Congress that the panel has asked to interview.

He was just chosen to be the next leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

And joining us now is CNN senior legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid.

Paula, what is Perry saying exactly? What's his reasoning for just denying this request? And remind us how he fits into the committee's investigation.

PAULA REID, CNN SENIOR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: What's so interesting here is, this wasn't even a subpoena. This was just a letter from his colleagues formally requesting that he voluntarily cooperate with their investigation into January 6.

[14:20:01]

He was the first lawmaker to receive such a letter. But he has declined the request. In a tweet, he suggested that the committee and its investigation are illegitimate and not duly constituted under the rules of the U.S. House of Representatives.

In this letter, though, that went to Perry, lawmakers laid out exactly why they wanted to talk to him. They say they want to talk to him specifically about former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark. Now, Clark when he was at the Justice Department was very open to using that agency to promote the big lie.

And Perry actually connected Trump and Clark at a time when Trump was really putting a lot of pressure on the Justice Department to find evidence that the election was stolen. Now, it's not clear at this point if lawmakers will now move to subpoena their colleague.

CABRERA: And the committee is facing some legal headwinds lately, right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones now refusing to comply with the panel, also now suing the committee.

What more can you tell us about the lawsuits the committee is facing?

REID: A lot of litigation swirling around this committee. We have now seen over a half-a-dozen lawsuits filed challenging various aspects of this investigation.

As you noted, far right-wing media personality and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is just the latest, so -- among the latest -- to file a lawsuit. He is challenging a subpoena that he has been issued by the committee. And in his suit, interestingly, he also reveals that he intends to follow this trend that many other Trump allies have followed, where he will assert the Fifth Amendment, instead of answering questions from the committee.

But so far, the committee has required anyone who wants to do that to come in, sit down, listen to the question, and assert their Fifth Amendment right where appropriate. They have not allowed anyone to just send a letter or call in and say, I plead the Fifth.

Now, among the people who have filed lawsuits related to this investigation are, of course, former President Trump. He has sued to try to block the committee from obtaining some of his White House records, citing executive privilege.

But twice now, federal courts have ruled against him, but he is expected to appeal that case to the Supreme Court, likely this week.

CABRERA: OK. Paula Reid, keep us posted. Thank you.

Renato Mariotti is a former federal prosecutor, the host of the podcast "On Topic."

Good to see you, Renato.

Congressman Scott Perry says, no, he's not going to answer questions. Now, this is just a request. Can the committee subpoena a fellow member of Congress?

RENATO MARIOTTI, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: They can. It's a little bit more complicated. There's an obscure portion of the Constitution called the speech or debate clause, which essentially protects members of Congress from criminal investigations into their legislative activities.

Of course, this isn't a criminal investigation. This is a fact-finding inquiry. He will, I'm sure, raise some noise about that. Ultimately, I think he's going to have to comply, although I suspect that there will be some back-and-forth and potentially I could imagine some litigation from him as well.

CABRERA: And, ultimately, the committee could make a referral to the Justice Department, if they discover crimes along the way or believe they have a case to be made.

"The New York Times" is reporting that is a possibility here, that the committee is looking into whether crimes were in fact committed. And a couple of their top potential crimes, at least at this point, are the potential wire fraud by Republicans who raised money off the big lie, and when they knew it was untrue, also whether the former president and his allies obstructed Congress by trying to block the certification of the electoral votes.

What needs to be proven to make the case on either of these?

MARIOTTI: So, for wire fraud, you need to prove not only that there was a lie that was being told in order to obtain money from other people, but also that it was done with the intent to defraud, in other words, the intent to trick people out of their money that -- in some way, in other words, as opposed to an honest belief that the election was stolen or honestly trying to do -- not to obtain the money via a false pretense.

On the other hand, the obstructing Congress, what they need to show is essentially that the -- certainly, there are some people obstructing Congress, these insurrectionists who were trying -- like, literally threatening to kill members of Congress. And so the question is for some of these other people, did they know about that criminal activity or -- and help make it succeed in some active way?

Or, alternatively, did they have some agreement with people who were storming the Capitol and play some role in that? And that's going to be a bit of a challenge to prove. I think that's what the committee is gathering this evidence to take a look at this.

CABRERA: So far, based on what the committee has made public, do they have enough evidence?

MARIOTTI: I don't think so far.

[14:25:05]

I mean, one key word that Liz Cheney mentioned was inaction. In other words, she suggested to Donald Trump through his action or inaction essentially provide aid to these insurrectionists? And I think there's no question that he, through his inaction, provided aid to them, because, by doing nothing to stop them, he essentially allowed them to continue.

But I don't think that would be enough to satisfy a court for purposes of criminal charges, and I think it remains to be seen whether or not he took, for example, more active steps.

CABRERA: Committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger suggested they're looking into whether the former president could or should be held criminally liable.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has worked very hard to keep the department from appearing political. Do you think he would bring charges against a former president?

MARIOTTI: Wow, that's a great question.

I mean, I certainly think, if the charges are there, in other words, if there's sufficient evidence to prove guilt, I think Merrick Garland should be considering the former president, just like any other American. I think there should be the same level of consideration.

He's not above the law. But, obviously, it would have broader implications. That said, I think, at this point, it's probably premature in terms of January 6 charges, based on what we have seen publicly. I haven't seen enough yet to indicate that there would be charges. But if I were advising the former president, I would tell him that he should be concerned.

CABRERA: Renato Mariotti, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate your time.

MARIOTTI: Thank you. Thank you.

CABRERA: We are watching the White House right now.

President Biden will deliver remarks on the rising cases of coronavirus across the country. We will bring his remarks to you live as soon as it happens.

But, first, here's a look at some of the other events we're watching today.

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