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New York City Mayor Releases Gun Violence Plan; Judge Orders Eastman to Respond to Subpoena; New Covid Cases Among Olympic Personnel; Dow Drops Ahead of Fed Meeting. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired January 25, 2022 - 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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BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: New York City Mayor Eric Adams has unveiled his blueprint to end gun violence.

[09:35:01]

His plan includes expanding mental health intervention services and support systems for young people and those who are homeless, as well as the reinstatement of NYPD's anti-crime unit. It also focuses on the use of surveillance-based technology, facial recognition and rollbacks on bail and discovery reform.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Listen, cops talk all the time about multiple causes for the rise in crime in New York. Guns among them. Also changes in policy, bail reform, et cetera. Public defenders are taking issue with some of the key points, including the reinstatement of that anti-crime unit.

CNN crime and justice correspondent Shimon Prokupecz joins us now from New York.

Shimon, I mean, this has been a hot button issue for a number of years. I just wonder, though, you've got an ex-cop who's mayor, you've got public concern about a rise in crime. Where does this go free here? Beyond opposition from public defenders, looks like this is going forward.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and also opposition from legislators, right?

SCIUTTO: Yes. PROKUPECZ: How much time have you spent talking on your show about bail reform? And what Eric Adams is calling for is for further reforms now where they can give more discretion to judges to keep people who are dangerous behind bars. And that is one of the key things in this proposal.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

PROKUPECZ: Yes, he's also calling to bring back these plain clothes cops, calling them neighborhood safety teams, giving them a new name. They are going to be in plain clothes, but they are going to have something on them, whether it's a field jacket, some kind of thing that's going to identify them as police officers. A big change certainly from way back when we had the anti-crime units and the street crime units.

Adams, this morning, was defending that move. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR ERIC ADAMS (D), NEW YORK CITY: I know how unfair and abusive that unit was because I testified in federal court. And the judge's ruling acknowledged my testimony, New York City versus Floyd, to rule against the behaviors and practices of the police department. Using that knowledge, we want to reinstitute an anti-gun unit where police officers will have a modified version of police uniform apparel, they are going to be better trained. We're going to use technologies with cameras to video every interaction. And I'm going to make sure the right officers are assigned there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PROKUPECZ: And, Jim and Bianna, the big focus in all of this really right now is gun violence, right? We've seen this surge in gun violence. Obviously, the two officers being brutally attacked with -- by that man with that weapon. So that is something that Adams is certainly focusing on.

He also knows this is something that police officers in this city want to hear. They like these anti-crime units, these -- what are now going to be called neighborhood safety teams, because it gives them the tools to fight crime. But what Adams also realizes is that he needs the district attorneys, he needs legislators to make changes.

All of this is also something that police officers want to hear. That's why we've heard from one of the unions already saying, you any what, this is a step in the right direction, supporting the mayor's move in all of this. And in the end, I think, Jim, what's going on here is that Adams knows that if he doesn't have the police officers working, if they're not willing to do the work, nothing changes.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

PROKUPECZ: And in the end, you need the D.A. and you need the legislators also to support the officers. So, there's a lot going on here. Let's see how this all unfolds in the weeks and months to come. SCIUTTO: Yes, two things you hear from cops a lot, concerns about guns

and you also hear that oftentimes they'll arrest someone and that person will be back on the streets before they even complete the paper work, right?

PROKUPECZ: Right.

SCIUTTO: And that's the issue it seems Adams is trying to begin to address here.

PROKUPECZ: Exactly.

GOLODRYGA: And, look, he argues that he has a mandate to do just that. That is was New Yorkers voted him in for to do.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: And it was interesting to hear him over the weekend tell New York police officers specifically that New Yorkers want you here, right?

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: To instill that support that, as you said, Shimon, that they feel that they don't necessarily have at this point.

Shimon, always great to have you on. Thank you.

PROKUPECZ: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Here in Washington, the January 6th committee could soon learn more about the expansive efforts to overturn the 2020 election on behalf of the former President Trump. A federal judge has ordered conservative lawyer John Eastman to respond to a subpoena for his emails from his former employer.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, a third party will then sift through as many as 19,000 emails to determine what should stay secret and what should be turned over.

CNN's Whitney Wild joins us now from Washington.

So, Whitney, what exactly are lawmakers hoping to learn from these many thousands of emails potentially?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're hoping to learn the granular details of what John Eastman was doing in the days leading up to January 6th and who he was doing it for. I mean, ultimately, the question is, was he working on his own behalf or was he working on behalf of the former president? And during this hearing, this very critical hearing yesterday, John Eastman's lawyers said over and over and over that these efforts that he was making were on behalf of former President Donald Trump. That is critical because this is information that the House select committee was not able to get out of John Eastman when he went in for a deposition and basically pleaded the Fifth to more than 100 questions. [09:40:07]

So, the hearing yesterday turned up substantive information that the House select committee wants to know and then further opened the door to even more information that the House select committee thinks is critical to understanding what was going on within the Trump camp, the intentions, the specific planning that went in to try to overturn this election.

I mean just one example of that was when John Eastman met with more than 300 state legislators to try to get them to stop this egregious conduct was the quote from that select committee's subpoena to John Eastman. So there were many instances along the timeline in which John Eastman was trying to, you know, use what he thought at the time were legal avenues to try to overturn the election and the House select committee wants to drill down on what the plan was and who directed it.

Back to you.

SCIUTTO: Yes, a lot of court losses for the folks trying to not cooperate, right, with these committees.

WILD: Right.

SCIUTTO: So the judge is tending to rule in favor.

Whitney Wild, thanks so much.

There are only ten days to go until the Beijing winter Olympics begin. Already Covid cases popping un inside the bubble. How the city is trying to respond, coming up.

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GOLODRYGA: Ten days until the start of the winter Olympics, and a growing number of Covid cases is causing concern in Beijing. Fifteen new cases have been confirmed among Olympic personnel, including three who were already inside that Olympic bubble.

SCIUTTO: So far more than 3,000 people are in Beijing to work for the winter games.

CNN's senior international correspondent Ivan Watson is in Hong Kong this morning.

Ivan, I wonder how the IOC, how China are reacting to this outbreak. Do they think they threatens the games at all?

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you just had a big meeting, the first one between the IOC president, Thomas Bach, who just arrived in China, and Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader. The countdown is underway to these winter Olympics, but the case count of Covid is growing both within this kind of Olympic Covid bubble that they call the closed loop, as you mentioned, some 15 new cases reported, and the organizing committee, they have conceded that they have some issues. They've had some complaints about the rooms that people are sent to in isolation within the closed loop about cleanliness and also about the food that is being given to people when they test positive and they have to go into isolation for days at a time.

But also within the general population in the Chinese capital. China has had this strict zero Covid approach to Covid, to the virus, since it was first discovered two years ago in Wuhan. And they've successfully kept the numbers down. But now the authorities say they have clusters of both omicron and delta in the general population, in Beijing, which is walled off from the Olympic bubble. And they're ordering millions of people to get mandatory Covid tests to try to stop this.

Some other unusual measures, they're ordering anybody who buys fever or cough medicine within the past 14 days to show up for a mandatory Covid test. And if you do buy this medicine over the counter, you're going to have to get a Covid test as well and the Chinese authorities can track you with this health app that everybody has to use. If you don't pass that, then you can't go into restaurants, you can't go into public spaces, you can't travel for the upcoming Chinese lunar new year, one of the biggest holidays of the Chinese calendar.

Back to you guys.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, Jim, apparently no measure is too extreme as far as China is concerned, in making sure this is a successful and Covid-free games, right?

SCIUTTO: Yes. No question.

Ivan Watson, good to have you there.

Well, new this morning, Israeli health officials are now recommending a fourth dose of the Covid vaccine for all adults there.

SCIUTTO: The data shows a fourth dose doubles the protection against infection and provides more than three times the level of protection against serious illness. They suggest people get it five months after their booster shot. Of course, the sad fact is, a big portion of this country has not gotten a single shot.

GOLODRYGA: That is true.

Well, a critical couple of days ahead for the Federal Reserve, but will they raise interest rates this week as some have feared? The latest, straight ahead.

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[09:53:09]

SCIUTTO: We're watching the Dow closely this morning. You can see there, down more than 600 points. At this hour, investors worried about inflation, possible interest rate hikes. This comes after yesterday, it dropped more than a thousand, but then had recovered all that and a little bit more by the end of the day. The word is volatility, Bianna.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, quite a wild swing on Wall Street yesterday.

Let's bring in CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans.

Christine, should we be expecting more of this volatility and wild swings, and when could we possibly hear from the Fed that they will, in fact, raise rates?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: So I think 2022 is going to be full of what we call headline risk on Wall Street, right? I mean there's just so much going on. It really is an obstacle course. The last couple of years for investors was downhill skiing. Now we're talking about all these different obstacles to overcome.

First the Fed. The Fed raising interest rates. Doing it for the right reasons, right? Raising interest rates because it's trying to tackle inflation. And there's some concern it might be behind the curve on that. The Fed not expected to move this week, you guys, but maybe up to four rate hikes this year. That's according to Goldman Sachs.

We'll hear from the Fed this week. It's having a policy meet. And I'm expecting they're going to lay out very clearly what they want to do here in the coming weeks and months. They don't want to surprise Wall Street and they don't want to roil the recovery.

Those obstacles I talked about, though, there's so many of them. This new rate hike regime that we're in here, this is going to be a very different kind of scenario for investors. These Russia/Ukraine tensions are not good for certainty on Wall Street.

We've had blockbuster earnings for a year or so. It could be more mixed here as companies are really dealing with inflation and supply chains that are more messed up for longer. And this is all kind of unraveling at the same time here. So, a couple of years of very good stock market gains, spectacular, I would say. Most of these U.S. averages have more than doubled from the March 2020 low.

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So, it's a reminder, you guys, stocks don't just go up. What we're seeing right now are corrections, a 10 percent at least decline in the Nasdaq, S&P is almost there. Those in general are healthy, right, we just have to kind of bear it in the near term here and see whether the Fed can do its job right and well and just how scary things get on that Russia/Ukraine situation.

SCIUTTO: Well, can the market survive without easy money, right? I mean it's been easy money for so long. We'll see.

ROMANS: Yes. Whole new era.

SCIUTTO: Christine Romans, thanks very much. ROMANS: A whole new era now.

SCIUTTO: Well, the White House is going to hold two classified briefings today for congressional staff about tensions between Russia and Ukraine and thousands of U.S. troops now on standby to move to NATO allies in eastern Europe. We are live in both Russia, Ukraine and Washington as well, coming up.

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