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Judge In Ghislaine Maxwell Sex Trafficking Trial Tells Jurors They Should Deliberate Through Weekend If No Verdict Reached; Rating Biden's First Year In Office; Top-10 Health Stories Of 2021. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired December 29, 2021 - 13:30   ET

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

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[13:30:08]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: It may be a holiday weekend but jury trials need to continue. That is the message from the presiding judge in the Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking trial.

And it comes as fears grow over the Omicron variant and potential of a possible mistrial of the long-time Jeffrey Epstein associate.

If convicted on all six counts, Maxwell could receive up to 70 years in prison.

Criminal and defense and congressional law attorney, Page Pate, joins us now to talk more about this.

Page, great to see you.

Unless jurors decide on a verdict here, they're going to keep going through New Year's. What do you make of that?

PAGE PATE, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I think that's very unusual. But I understand the judge is concerned, number one, that they don't have a verdict yet.

Although they did indicate yesterday they were making progress, we have not seen the type of progress, I think, that the judge was hoping for when she decided to give them time off for Christmas.

The other thing, obviously, that's concerning the judge, and I think many people right now, is the fact that COVID numbers are, you know, coming up again.

And it's very possible, when you have this many people serving on a jury together, they're doing deliberations, that there can be obviously some transmission of COVID.

If that happens, if someone gets sick, if they have to stop deliberations, then that could lead to a mistrial, which means they have to start all over again.

Obviously, the judge is concerned about those things. DEAN: Right. And the jury, we know, has sent 14 notes, and

deliberations are in their sixth day.

Today is the first time they asked for transcripts of five witnesses. Fourteen notes they've sent out with questions.

What do you think is happening here? What does that tell you?

PATE: It's always difficult to know what's going on in the jury room. I think most people assume, hey, if they're asking for written transcripts, if they're asking questions about the jury instructions, maybe the jury is split.

But it could just mean there are one or two people holding out and the others in the jury are trying to convince them on the evidence by getting that evidence again, going over the testimony of the witnesses again to try to convince them that it's either guilty or not guilty.

And in this case, it's not like a simple murder case or manslaughter case where you have one or two counts. There are six separate counts. And these are fairly complicated federal charges.

So that's necessarily going to take some time to go through.

DEAN: At this point, what do you think the probability is of a mistrial? Is that something that you think is still kind of out of the realm of possibility or possible?

PATE: Well, it's certainly possible, because even though the judge can make the jury stay through the holiday weekend, she cannot pressure them to return a verdict.

Federal law requires the jury to understand that they don't have to give up a firmly, honestly held belief just in order to reach a verdict or to reach consensus.

So they've gone a long time. And it is certainly possible that we may see them extend through the weekend.

And if they can't get a verdict before the holiday weekend, and they don't want to stay through the holiday weekend, they may tell the judge that, look, we've tried but we just can't do it.

DEAN: I guess we will see.

Page Pate, thanks so much. We appreciate it.

PATE: Thank you, Jessica.

DEAN: We have just learned Russian President Vladimir Putin has requested a call with President Biden. We've got more on that, next.

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[13:35:07] DEAN: As we near the end of President Biden's calendar year of being president, he faces some major mounting challenges, from surging COVID cases and testing shortages to his Build Back Better plan on life support in Congress.

With me now is CNN presidential historian, Tim Naftali.

Tim, great to see you.

I'm going to ask you to put on your professor hat for a few minutes and give us some grade on Biden's first year and how you think it went.

We can start with the issue of the day, COVID.

The president admitting yesterday, even with the ramping up of testing provided by the federal government, is clearly not enough. And he said if we had known, we would have gone harder and quicker if we could have.

What grade do you give the president on handling the pandemic?

TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: First of all, happy holidays, everyone.

And we are watching science in real time. In fact, we're getting a real-time education in science.

And the pandemic has not evolved, as I'm sure the president would like, so the president just shared with us an optimism that turned out a little bit premature.

I think that has hurt the perception of his competence in handling the pandemic, although I wouldn't say it was fair.

I would give him an "A" over "B," "A"-minus over "B"-plus.

He's used the Defense Production Act to ramp up access to critical equipment, but he didn't push hard enough on the tests. And I think that had to do with a little bit of optimism before the Omicron variant hit us here.

He has changed the rhetoric. And he has also been very sensitive to the fact that 40 percent of the country is a little skeptical about vaccines and 20 percent is extremely skeptical.

So he's trying to find a way to work with governors and use fewer mandates to try to get Americans vaccinated and to help our public health in general.

DEAN: So what do you think about the economy? What grade would you give him on the economy?

[13:40:04]

NAFTALI: Well, there, I think the president is a little unlucky. If you look just at the stats, our economy is doing well.

When he came to office, unemployment was about 6.5 percent. It's now a little below 4 percent.

GOP, we don't know. We don't have the full year yet. But it looks like it's going to be about 5.4 percent or 5.5 percent growth rate. Last year, we dropped 3.4 percent.

Where the problem is, is inflation, of course. Inflation is about 6.4 percent, the highest it's been since 1982. On the other hand, wages have grown 8 percent.

So if you look at our economy, we're actually doing quite well. But we're unhappy. We're in a pandemic. There's a sour mood. There's a lot of uncertainty. And when there's a lot of uncertainty, people blame their president.

I would say he's done very well. His stimulus may have been a bit big, not just his but Congress'.

On the other hand, if the stimulus package had not been big in the early part of 2021, a lot of people would be hurting right now.

So we took a little more inflation than we'd like, but it may dissipate. The economy is strong, however.

I would give him an "A"-minus for the economy.

DEAN: All right.

His legislative agenda. How do you grade Biden when it comes to his agenda?

He got some things through with COVID relief, with the infrastructure bill. Build Back Better, though, is pretty much on life support now.

How would you grade him there?

NAFTALI: The president has not been a strong leader of his caucus. He made an important decision early on that he would split the infrastructure bill from the Build Back Better bill.

The progressive caucus was very unhappy when he did that. And the progressive caucus has never let him forget that.

This is where -- unfortunately, Joe Biden is not Lyndon Johnson. Joe Biden can't seem to pull together the Democrats and make clear to them that they don't have a national mandate for the enormous social transformational bill that the progressive caucus would like to put in place.

There's a taste, there's a desire in the country, certainly, for some of the elements of that bill. But there never was the votes in Congress for $3 trillion, or as it turns out, a $1.5 trillion bill.

The president has looked weak because he had ended up having to negotiate between the centrists in his party and the progressives. He hasn't been able to negotiate with Republicans on this issue.

I think it's unfortunate that the president hasn't been able to show leadership. I don't think it's 100 percent his fault. I think the congressional caucus has decided to play the game differently and be tough on him.

But I would give him a "B"-minus because I think he raised expectations unnecessarily, making himself look weak when the problem is in Congress.

DEAN: Biden has also faced major foreign policies issues in his first year, especially with Afghanistan and Russia. We just learned that President Biden is going to speak with Putin tomorrow at Putin's request.

Where would you rate on foreign policy?

NAFTALI: Well, there, I'm afraid I'm going to have to give him a "C"- plus there.

And that's after four years of incompetence. What was most important, in my estimation, was we showed the world we back as a competent superpower.

That didn't mean we had to be aggressive. That didn't mean we had to be insensitive. But it meant that we understood our power. We respected ourselves and we expected respect from others.

The pullout from Afghanistan was an unforced error by the president. The American people were not rushing to get out of Afghanistan.

If you remember when it happened, it happened when the Delta variant hit us. President Biden's public approval rating had already started to drop before the Taliban took Kabul.

But his decision to rush out of Afghanistan sent a signal around the world of incompetence. And what we needed after Trump was competent leadership.

It didn't have to be flashy. It just had to be, we're back, we're in control, we understand our responsibilities and our interests. Afghanistan ruined that.

And the problem now for the president is he has some authoritarian leaders who don't quite respect this country. And one of them is Putin.

And when authoritarian leaders don't respect us, they push. They see what they can get away with.

What we're seeing in the Balkans and in Ukraine is a Russia and the Russian allies pushing to see how far they can go.

This has been tough for the president. I think he can bring it back because he has a long history of foreign policy experience.

But we're in a position that we didn't have to be in, in the Biden administration, and I think it's because of Afghanistan.

DEAN: Overall, what grade would you give him for 2021, would you say?

[13:44:59]

NAFTALI: First of all, I have to say that, as a professor, I'm not a president, but I'm going to have to give him -- you've asked for a grade -- but I'm going to give him a solid "B" with a lot of room for improvement.

Part of this is, I think, is his ability to pull together the Democrat caucus and part of this will be the pandemic.

I think the pandemic has undermined the kind of optimism that I think he was trying to project in his excellent inaugural address, and the unity in the country that he hoped for.

Well, that's not up to the president. That's up to us. We have some work to do, too, as Americans.

DEAN: All right, Tim Naftali, thank you so much. We appreciate it. And happy New Year to you.

NAFTALI: Happy New Year, Jessica.

DEAN: Thanks.

Up next, Dr. Sanjay Gupta looks back at the top-10 health stories of 2021, including some you may have missed as COVID dominated headlines.

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[13:50:13]

DEAN: There is no doubt COVID dominated this year's headlines. But as CNN chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, shows us, COVID wasn't the only significant health story of 2021.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: While the coronavirus pandemic did demand most of our attention, another epidemic continued to surge.

UNIDENTIFIED NEWS CORRESPONDENT: All right, America's drug epidemic now deadlier than it has ever been.

UNIDENTIFIED NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Record death toll --

S. GUPTA: For the first time on record, more than 100,000 people died from drug overdoses in a 12-month period, between May 2020 and April 2021, much of it from illicit Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.

Now, President Biden's new drug czar, Dr. Rahul Gupta -- no relation to me -- told me that we need to more strongly employ harm reduction, making drug use safer, with things like no walk zone (ph), clean syringes and testing drugs for the presence of Fentanyl.

People will say, look, you're enabling drug use. That's -- that's the provocation.

DR. RAHUL GUPTA, U.S. DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY: As an evidence-based physician that has spent his career dealing with science and moving data around, we just do not have that evidence.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight, for the first time in almost 20 years, there's a new drug just approved to treat people in the early phases of Alzheimer's disease.

S. GUPTA (voice-over): In June, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration greenlit Aduhelm, the first new drug approved to treat Alzheimer's disease since 2003.

Now, according to the FDA, the drug can reduce Alzheimer's signature tangles and plaques of amyloid proteins that block the neural pathways in people with mild disease.

But the approval was controversial, with many researchers, including the FDA's own independent advisory committee, saying the evidence simply wasn't there to show it slows down cognitive decline.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The effectiveness is something that we don't fully understand just yet.

BLITZER: There's a growing concern about a surge of COVID-19 cases in Tokyo.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Instead of a medal count, we're already tracking the COVID count.

S. GUPTA (on camera): It had already been postponed the previous year, but this summer, the Tokyo Olympic Games took place in the midst of a pandemic.

Strict testing and masking protocols were put into place. And attempts were made to keep athletes in a bubble, with very limited interaction with anyone outside.

I reported first-hand about how the Olympics pandemic playbook was being put to the test.

Is there a criteria by which you would start to become concerned?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mostly what we look at is, is changes in patterns. So if we started to see infection in people who weren't part of a close contact group, if we started to see a rising number, if we started to see the cases doubling more rapidly than we thought.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Today, the Department of Health and Human Services announcing sweeping changes to its vaccine rollout to get more people vaccinated.

DR. ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: They're now saying that the vaccine should be made available to anyone over age 65.

S. GUPTA (voice-over): The first COVID shots went to the most vulnerable: nursing home residents, frontline healthcare workers. And then eligible was expanded to those with underlying conditions and those 65 and older.

(on camera): By April, everyone 16 years and older in the United States was eligible for a shot.

In May, 12- to 15-year-olds were authorized for Pfizer shots. And in August, Pfizer's vaccine became the first fully-FDA-approved COVID vaccine in the United States.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT & CNN HOST, "RELIABLE SOURCES": The Biden White House calling out the misinformation machine, accusing Facebook of killing people by letting anti-vaccine lies linger on the platform.

UNIDENTIFIED NEWS ANCHOR: Their outrageous, offensive posts that compare vaccines to the Holocaust and Nazi Germany.

S. GUPTA: It has become so significant an issue that the surgeon general called it a serious threat to public health.

DR. VIVEK MURTHY, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: We are still seeing misinformation spread like wildfire on social media sites, in particular.

S. GUPTA (voice-over): What's resulted is a persistent pandemic, with more than 100,000 new infections daily and tens of thousands of COVID patients in the hospital, most of them unvaccinated.

UNIDENTIFIED CNN CORRESPONDENT: In some of these heavily red districts that voted overwhelmingly for the former president, Donald Trump, the vaccines remain unpopular.

Not just hesitancy here. There are people that truly believe the vaccine is a big problem.

S. GUPTA: With more than one in 10 Americans saying they have no plans on getting a shot --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We live in a free country, and the right to make our own healthcare decisions is the core of it.

S. GUPTA (on camera): -- school districts, businesses, states, even the federal government are starting to implement vaccine mandates in an effort to return to normal.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This is not about freedom or personal choice. It's about protecting yourself and those around you.

S. GUPTA: It is one of the clearest examples of public health colliding with politics.

[13:55:04]

UNIDENTIFIED NEW CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Health officials in China are trying to identify a mysterious strain of pneumonia.

UNIDENTIFIED NEWS CORRESPONDENT A mysterious new cluster of pneumonia cases.

S. GUPTA (voice-over): When we first learned of this virus nearly two years ago, we had no idea the destruction it would leave in its wake.

(on camera): By September, we lost more lives to COVID than the estimated 675,000 people who perished in the 1918 flu pandemic.

Now, granted, the population in the United States was one-third of what it is now, but there were no vaccines available 100 years ago, either.

It is difficult to fathom that we have now lost more than 800,000 lives to the coronavirus, sadly, much of it preventable, as Dr. Deborah Birx told me.

DR. DEBORAH BIRX, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE COORDINATOR: There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge. All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.

S. GUPTA (voice-over): After most kids spent the first year of the pandemic online, getting kids back into the classroom this year was a priority for everyone.

But how to do it? Well, that was up for debate.

(on camera): Vaccination requirements, mask mandates, testing, quarantines. It all erupted into clashes at local school board meetings across the country.

(SHOUTING)

S. GUPTA (voice-over): While children are less likely to be hospitalized from COVID-19, the number of infections among children has been steadily rising since this summer.

In October, the FDA authorized a smaller dose of the Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5 through 11. But that group does remain the least vaccinated.

Vaccination is an important tool to controlling this pandemic. But we are still learning just how long that protection can last.

Studies are finding that antibody levels can start to fall after a few months, making people more susceptible to infection, while protection against severe disease does remain high.

The CDC has now expanded the recommendation for all adults over 18 to get a booster shot six months after the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines and two months after the Johnson & Johnson one. DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND

INFECTIOUS DISEASES: We know they're safe, and we know they're highly effective in bringing very, very high up the optimization of your protection.

S. GUPTA (on camera): Over the last two years, there have been thousands of variants, with a handful of them becoming variants of concern.

Still, vaccination, masking, testing can help limit the spread of the virus.

This past spring, we saw the rise of Delta, a variant two to three times as infectious as the original coronavirus.

It overwhelmed India and then Europe. And this summer, it swept through the southern United States, where vaccination rates were among the lowest in the country.

And now, Omicron cases are growing all over the world.

FAUCI: This is really something to be reckoned with. It is -- it is really rapidly spreading, literally throughout the world, and, certainly, in our own country.

S. GUPTA: As the weather gets cooler and we move indoors, remember to get your shots, to mask up.

Despite all the fear, we do have the tools to stay healthy and protected.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DEAN: And as we approach the New Year, don't forget, the boys are back. You can join Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen for a "CNN NEW YEAR'S EVE LIVE." The party starts at 8:00 here on CNN.

That is going to do it for me.

The news continues next with Alisyn Camerota.

Have a great afternoon.

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