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Alex Jones Meets With January 6 Committee; Russia Tensions Rising; Pfizer Testing Omicron Vaccine. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired January 25, 2022 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00]

BRIAN DEESE, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: The issue right now is that we have constrained supply into a global market that is increasing in demand.

And that is an issue that we have been working on with our partners and our allies. The -- the price of oil is set globally. And so we are certainly looking at contingencies.

But we believe that there are actions that we can take, both ourselves and with partners, to mitigate that impact across time. But, to be very clear, that principal locus of the economic pain that will be felt is in the Russian economy. And that's certainly, both in narrative and in substance, what we're trying to communicate right now.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: All right, Brian Deese, always good to have you. Thank you, sir.

DEESE: You're welcome.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: OK, top of the hour now on NEWSROOM. I'm Alisyn Camerota.

BLACKWELL: I'm Victor Blackwell. Good to be with you.

We're beginning with the breaking news on a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine.

A short time ago, President Biden told our Kaitlan Collins that he is considering sanctioning Vladimir Putin directly if Russian forces enter Ukraine. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This is all Putin. I don't even think his people know for certain what he is going to Do.

QUESTION: Would you ever see yourself personally sanctioning him if he did invade Ukraine?

BIDEN: Yes.

QUESTION: You would?

BIDEN: I would see that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: CNN has this story covered from multiple angles.

So let's start with Oren Liebermann at the Pentagon.

Oren, the president was also asked about the 8,500 U.S. troops that are now on heightened alert. So what did he say?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, he said those troops could deploy in the near term, although he didn't offer specifics on when they might deploy, how near that might be or how imminent that deployment might be, or to where they might deploy.

The U.S. right now is still keeping its options open. The Pentagon came out yesterday and said as many as 8,500 troops got prepare-to- deploy orders, which is essentially a heads-up of, get ready, you may be deploying soon to Europe.

But the Pentagon is also keeping options open, saying it might even be more troops, and it wouldn't just be if it was in response to the NATO Response Force activating to bolster Eastern European allies there, but the Pentagon in the White House could also see and move unilaterally here if they see fit.

What were those situations? Well, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said, if the security situation deteriorates, then those troops might deploy to Eastern Europe. The Pentagon also said that troops within Europe might move, suggesting that troops in Western Europe further away from Russia might be pushed east there, again, not only to support Eastern European allies, but also as deterrence, as a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as the U.S. tries to figure out what he's going to do or isn't going to do.

The U.S. still very much warning here that an invasion is imminent now or could be imminent. Now, the U.S. hasn't said exactly where these troops might go, but it has been clear that the most likely scenario is that they're put under NATO command as part of the multinational 40,000-strong NATO Response Force.

And that would be used on the eastern flank there. If Putin's goal was to get NATO further away with his buildup of forces there, he has achieved the exact opposite.

BLACKWELL: Oren Liebermann, thank you.

Let's go to Kaitlan Collins at the White House.

Kaitlan, you spoke with the president there a short time ago. The White House is standing by this assessment that an invasion is imminent. What did the president say about that?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they say it's basically hard to know.

And they said imminent because they did have this possibility, this real sense that they maintain, is still their assessment that this could come at any time.

And something that President Biden was talking about with us just now when he went to visit this small business owner here in Washington just over on Capitol Hill, he was -- we were talking about what was happening. Obviously, he met with his national security team earlier today. So we had questions about whether there were updates and really what has been this standoff where everyone is kind of just waiting to see what is it that the Russian leader does.

And the president was talking about how difficult to know it is -- what it is that he's going to do, how difficult it is to get inside Putin's mind and know what move he's going to make. And President Biden told us that he doesn't think that even some of the top aides around the Russian leader know what he's thinking.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: It's a little bit like reading tea leaves. Ordinarily, if it were a different leader, the fact that he continues to build forces along Ukraine's border from Belarus all the way around, you would say, well, that means that he is looking like he's going to do something.

But then you look at what his past behavior is, and what everyone is saying in his team as well, as everyone else, as to what is likely to happen. It all comes down to his decision.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Saying it all comes down to Putin's decision. Of course, that is what we all know here.

But the president was also talking about what would happen if Putin does make this decision to invade Ukraine, which the president has said his personal guess is that he will do so.

And I asked if he would take the step of personally sanctioning the Russian leader. That would be a massive step, one that has not been taken before. And he said, yes, that is something that he would consider if Putin did go into Ukraine.

[15:05:08]

And so one thing we should also note, when we were talking about those troop deployments, and the troops that are now on high alert, but have not been deployed yet, as Oren noted, the president said he has no intention of sending any U.S. forces or any NATO forces into Ukraine, saying that is not something that's on the table for right now. Of course, that's been a big question.

But he said that, if Putin does go into Ukraine, that would be the biggest invasion in Europe since World War II. And he talked about the big global consequences of this. This is not just an issue between Ukraine and Russia. This is something that would have consequences that would reverberate throughout Europe. Of course, it would certainly, significantly, be of big consequence in the West.

And so the president talking about that there, making clear what the consequences of this would be, not just for Russia and for Putin, potentially, but also what it would look like for the global dynamic.

CAMEROTA: Nic Robertson is also with us in Moscow.

So, Nic, I know that Russian state media is depicting all of this, all of these moves very differently than the press here. So how are Russians viewing all of this?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, well, on state media earlier this evening, they were sort of depicting sound bites from Jen Psaki, from the president, from John Kirby at the Pentagon, from Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, and saying, look, they're all sort of saying different things.

What we're hearing from the Kremlin spokesman is that this possible deployment of 8,500 troops, U.S. troops to sort of the east side of Europe, the Russians see that as destabilizing, as raising tensions, as part of what they consider a sort of a Western pretext to create some kind of scope or reason to begin a conflict.

But the Kremlin spokesman is also saying that President Putin is still open to diplomacy, the track of diplomacy is open. The Russians are waiting to get the letter from the United States, the letter from NATO this week with the written responses to their demands that go back a month or so, something they have been wanting for a long time.

But I think what's beginning to emerge here is this. We know it's a twin-track approach by Vladimir Putin. But on the one hand, it's got this diplomatic track, this head-on diplomatic track about what NATO can and cannot do, his views. That's going with the U.S. and with NATO.

But it's also got this separate track of what to do about the separatists, the pro-Russian separatists area in the east of Ukraine, the Donbass area. And the Kremlin spokesman has been saying, look, the Ukrainian forces are building up, they're getting armaments, and we think that they're creating a danger right there.

So what is happening tomorrow? Well, tomorrow, in Paris, the Normandy group, Germany, France, Russia, Ukraine, get together to discuss that eastern enclave. There is a potential piece of a sweetener, of something to get Putin on the off-ramp, if he feels he can get what he wants on that Donbass region. That isn't an off-ramp, but it's an entree to an off-ramp. And that is

kind of a separate thing, because the U.S. is not at the table in those negotiations. That's France and Germany, who are not seen as strong as other European allies in pushing back against Putin.

CAMEROTA: Really interesting developments.

Kaitlan Collins, Nic Robertson, Oren Liebermann, thank you all.

Back here, right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is the latest meet with the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

BLACKWELL: On his podcast. Jones said that, by his lawyer's count, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment almost 100 times during his virtual meeting with the panel on Monday.

CNN's Ryan Nobles joins us now.

Ryan, first tell us where Alex Jones fits into this and anything more we know about this meeting.

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jones was actually pretty revealing in his podcast about his experience with the January 6 Select Committee.

And, to your point, Victor, he's of great interest to them, because he was a central player in essentially raising the rhetoric around the false claims about the 2020 election, not only in his podcast leading up to January 6, but on January 5 and January 6 itself. He was one of the keynote speakers at several of these rallies that really fired up the crowd on those days.

And he also played a big role in the financing and the fund-raising of these rallies in the days leading up to January 6. And, to your point, what he said is that he simply just did not answer a lot of these questions that the committee put in front of him. He said that he pled the Fifth close to 100 different times.

He also said that the committee actually had access to his phone, that they were reading back to him text exchanges that he had with some of the fund raisers and rally organizers at that time. And he was also concerned that if he answered their questions that they might take what he had to say out of context, and then accuse him of lying to Congress.

So that was the reason that he just didn't answer those questions.

One of the other things that Jones revealed that I think is of particular interest is that the committee was asking him questions about whether or not these right-wing militia groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the 3 Percenters, whether or not any of them were serving as security for Jones and his entourage on January 5 and January 6.

[15:10:12] He told this podcast audience that he had nothing to do with them, that he only hires private professional security, as he described it. But it just does give us a little bit of insight as to what the committee is looking for as it relates to Jones and then, more broadly, of this plot that led to the January 6 insurrection -- Victor and Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Ryan, also, a federal judge is also ordering former Trump lawyer John Eastman to respond to a subpoena. So what do we know about that?

NOBLES: Yes, that's right.

This is a lawsuit that Eastman filed to prevent his former employer Chapman University from handing over thousands of e-mails that he sent as -- when he was an employee of that university. And, at this point, the judge seems inclined to allow the university to hand that information over to the committee.

But he set the stage for them to review all of these documents, thousands and thousands of e-mails. And, by doing so, though, his lawyer has actually revealed just how involved Eastman was in some of the plots that took place on those days. That's because he's saying that these e-mails should be protected because of attorney-client privilege.

And, as a result, the lawyer saying that there were conversations that he had with the former president and his staff, and it shows us just how much Eastman was involved in those events at the Willard Hotel, also these plots to try and undermine the certification of the election results through the vice president, Mike Pence, who, of course, Pence declined to go along with that idea -- Victor and Alisyn.

BLACKWELL: Ryan Nobles for us on Capitol Hill.

Thank you, Ryan.

Elie Honig is a senior and senior legal analyst, former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Elie, good to see you.

Let's start here with John Eastman. And you got to feel for Chapman University. Now they have been dragged into this, trying to go through these e-mails from John Eastman.

Explain what Ryan just started to talk about, this attorney-client privilege and how that exposes the degree of interaction with the White House.

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, so the committee decided that they need to get information about John Eastman, rightly so. He's a central player, as Ryan just said.

Eastman was there throughout the key meetings leading up to this. So John Eastman spent himself took the Fifth Amendment. That means he can't be forced to testify. But that does not mean the committee cannot investigate him. So the committee very smartly said, well, why don't we subpoena the university that he worked for? They would have his e-mails.

Eastman, at that point, said, no, no, no, but there may be attorney- client privilege as between me and Donald Trump on some of those e- mails. So we need to pause and take a look at them.

But the key concession that was made by Eastman was that he was, in fact, acting on behalf of Donald Trump as Donald Trump's lawyer at key planning meetings, at key efforts, key points in the effort to try to obstruct the counting of the electoral votes.

So it's no longer an argument that Eastman was acting as a freelancer or on his own. We know he was acting for and as Donald Trump's attorney.

CAMEROTA: Elie, can we go back to Alex Jones for a minute?

Why would the committee call a known fabricator, a known liar, a conspiracy theorist who tormented those Sandy Hook families? And then his even his lawyer had to say it was all just a performance, his performance art.

Why? I mean, and then, of course, he pleaded the Fifth 100 times. Why would they even give him fodder to use on his podcast?

HONIG: It's a great question, Alisyn. I don't think the committee believes Alex Jones.

There is no reason to believe anything Alex Jones says anytime ever. Perhaps they just wanted to put pressure on him. Perhaps they just wanted to make him take the Fifth, so they can make some sort of political point about that.

I think what the committee is looking for here is to see if there's any links between the biggest spreaders of the big lie, the Alex Joneses, and any of those groups that we now know planned and did storm the Capitol, Oath Keepers.

And Ryan talked about that. Now, Alex Jones apparently has denied any such connections. But, no, I would give Alex Jones as little credit as humanly possible. I would not believe anything he said.

BLACKWELL: Elie, give me 30 seconds on Michael Avenatti making this decision in this lawsuit. His former client, Stormy Daniels, the porn star who says that she had an affair with former President Trump, is suing him.

She says that Avenatti defrauded her out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And now he's decided to get rid of the public defender and represent himself.

HONIG: Yes, it's a -- always a very risky move to get rid of any lawyer and to represent yourself, especially when you are a key player in the case.

Of course, I mean, this sets the stage, oddly enough, for Michael Avenatti to cross-examine Stormy Daniels when she takes the stand. It is an enormously high-risk gambit for Michael Avenatti. It could backfire spectacularly.

The jury will be watching this. I wouldn't like the dynamic if I was on Michael Avenatti's end of this of having to cross-examine his own former client who claims she was robbed by him, essentially, so very risky move.

[15:15:03]

I think Michael Avenatti has shown that he is nothing, if not highly unpredictable.

CAMEROTA: Fair enough.

Elie Honig, thank you.

HONIG: Thank you both.

CAMEROTA: Now to this. New York's attorney general is asking the state Supreme Court to stay its ruling, in other words, keep the mask mandate in effect, until the appeals process is done.

BLACKWELL: And Pfizer is starting clinical trials for its Omicron variant vaccine. But could it be too late?

We will ask the expert.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: The New York attorney general has asked for a stay to keep the governor's mask mandate from schools and public locations in effect during an appeals process.

[15:20:04]

BLACKWELL: Now, yesterday, a judge ruled the mandate violates state law because the governor no longer has emergency powers, but added this.

"To be clear, this court does not intend this decision in any way to question or otherwise opine on the efficacy, need or requirement of masks as a means or tool in dealing with the COVID-19 virus."

Epidemiologist Dr. Abdul El-Sayed joins us now, also the former Detroit health commissioner.

Dr. El-Sayed, welcome back.

I imagine that it's a bit frustrating to hear the judge on one hand say, masks work, on the other hand say, but you can't force people to wear. What do you think? DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I want to back up here and just remember the context; 2,200 people a day for the last seven days have died of COVID-19.

We are not behind this pandemic in any way. And the fact of the matter is, is that we need to figure out how to be able to protect the public. And, unfortunately, these kinds of mandates are really important, particularly in the scenario where there is this large ideological rift, largely perpetrated by politicians, that keeps calling into question these things, whether they're masks or vaccines.

And so these things really are important. So it's really frustrating to hear the judge opine and then say he's not opining.

CAMEROTA: Well, you're going to be frustrated a lot, in that case, because there are so many states and so many governors who really don't want schoolkids to be wearing masks anymore and are doing all they can to lose the mask mandates.

And I'm just wondering, at this point in the pandemic -- and your point is very well-taken -- 2,200 Americans died yesterday from COVID. But we are seeing the numbers, the case numbers tick down. If schoolkids lose their masks right now, like, stop wearing them, does that mean that the Omicron surge goes backwards?

Or are we now on a downward slope of Omicron?

EL-SAYED: Well, I think those two things are unrelated.

Yes, we are on a downward slope of Omicron. And perhaps increasing the transmission in schools could slow that downward curve. But I want folks to remember that the trend that we're headed in is not an indication of where we are. We may be on the way down, but the number of cases is still quite high. And so the risk is still very real.

And the other question here is that why can't we find some middle ground? All of us want our kids to be in school. But why do we want our kids to be in school at a potentially higher risk? Why do people believe that wearing a mask is so difficult, that it's going to get in the way of kids learning?

And the fact of the matter is, is that getting kids in school safely implies being able to do things like make sure that they're vaccinated and making sure that they're wearing masks. And so these things are not mutually exclusive, despite the fact that we have political polarization and politicians on one side of this trying to tell us that it is all or nothing.

And as the father of a 4-year-old, I will tell you this. I feel a lot better, given the fact that my kid can't be vaccinated, that she and kids around her have to wear masks in school. It protects them from one another and protects all of them in ways that are critical in the midst of a pandemic that, of course, took 2,200 lives just yesterday.

BLACKWELL: Let me ask you about Pfizer and beginning this trial of Omicron-specific vaccines. They are going to bring up in up to 1,400 people, some who have two shots, who have boosted, some with no shots at all, and to see if it's effective. But by the time it gets through that trial, and then potentially to emergency use authorization, will it be too late for Omicron?

EL-SAYED: You're absolutely right, Victor.

Here's the thing. We know that this wave will have passed by the time that trial results. Here's the question. Is an Omicron-specific vaccine targeting those three clusters of mutations on the spike protein, will that have protection against potential endemic Omicron moving forward?

And will that have potential against potentially the next variant that comes forward? That really is the question. But, for right now, it's somewhat frustrating and also questionable that they're calling it an Omicron-specific vaccine, considering the fact that Omicron's surge, given the natural history we have seen in other countries that have been affected by Omicron, whether it's the U.K. or South Africa, that that surge will likely have abated by the time that study even resolves, let alone those vaccines get manufactured.

BLACKWELL: All right.

CAMEROTA: We only have a few -- oh, so let me just -- very quickly, one second.

BLACKWELL: Go ahead.

CAMEROTA: Israel's advisory group recommends a fourth dose for all adults. Is this going to be -- is this truly a fourth dose? Or is this going to be like the flu shot where every year we get a COVID vaccine because it changes?

EL-SAYED: Well, it's still too early to tell.

I will tell you this. I really wish everybody just picked up the recommendation for a third dose, because 52 percent of Americans have gotten their third dose. And that leaves 86 million people unboosted. And we know that boosting protects against Omicron.

And so before we get ahead of ourselves, let's not forget that, if folks are not boosted yet, please go and do that thing then. Get that third dose before not too long, given the fact that Omicron is still spreading amongst us.

[15:25:02]

BLACKWELL: All right, Abdul El-Sayed, thank you.

EL-SAYED: Thank you.

BLACKWELL: Elton John has postponed two concerts in Dallas after he tested positive for COVID. CAMEROTA: The venue added: "Fortunately, Elton is fully vaccinated

and boosted and is experiencing only mild symptoms. Fans should hold on to their tickets, as they will be honored at the rescheduled dates to be announced soon."

The legendary singer had just returned to performing after a nearly- two-year hiatus because of the pandemic. So far, no other shows have been postponed.

BLACKWELL: President Biden caught on a hot mic calling a reporter a stupid SOB. I'm abbreviating. He didn't abbreviate. That was after he asked the president a question about inflation.

We have got that story next.

CAMEROTA: And this just in. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is apologizing for invoking Nazis and Anne Frank during an anti-vax speech. His comments were condemned by so many people, including his own wife. Maybe that's what turned it around.

More on that ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)