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Fed Meets as it Considers Rate Hikes; DOJ Addresses Rise in Crime; Alex Jones Meets with January 6th Committee; Apple Gets Restraining Order. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired January 26, 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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[09:31:32]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: The markets opening just seconds ago in the middle of what's been really a roller coaster week on Wall Street. Let's have a look, if we can. Right now the Dow, well, it's up 250 points. Not the way the market started the day the last couple of days. This as the Federal Reserve meets again today facing a crucial decision on when and whether to raise interest rates to help combat inflation.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, volatility appears to be the name of the game here. Many experts believe that it could signal those changes could come as early as March.

So, let's bring in CNN economics and political commentator Catherine Rampell.

Catherine, great to see you.

So, we know that this administration going back to really last fall has been trying to use whatever tools it can to tackle rising inflation, right, and really going after supply chain issues and congestions at U.S. ports.

Given what we are now, is a rate hike by the Federal Reserve really the best tool and only remaining tool to really nip inflation in the bud?

CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It is by definition the Fed's job to deal with price stability by congressional mandate, among other things, as well as, obviously, reputation and credibility. They have the tools available and the most powerful tools available to deal with this above trend inflation. So, yes, everyone is looking to the Fed to see, when are they going to

start raising interest rates, when are they going to start shrinking their balance sheet. Probably neither of those things will be announced as happening today, but investors and others will be looking to the Fed for clues about the likely path forward for those interest rate changes, as well as the balance sheet offloading.

SCIUTTO: Catherine, can you make an argument, let's play devil's advocate here, that the markets, the U.S., has been doped up on cheap money for years, right, even in the midst of expansions, right, and I'm talking both about low interest rates, but also this, you know, enormous bond buying, you know, trillions of dollars, what's known as quantitative easing. Can't you make an argument that it's about time?

RAMPELL: Well, the Fed is basically evaluating those data right now. They have been trying to juice the economy, right? We went through a very severe, albeit brief recession at the beginning of 2020, caused by the pandemic. They pulled out (INAUDIBLE) of the arrows from their quiver to try to, you know, to deal with that, to help juice the economy and, you know, and inject more liquidity into it. That was the point.

The question right now becomes, have we reached a point where they've, you know, they say mission accomplished, essentially. The economy is doing about as well as it should be doing. And maybe we've overshot a little bit and we need to roll things back.

GOLODRYGA: Catherine, as we're watching your shot come in and out, we're reminded of technological limitations too, that this country continues to face. And we talk about supply chain concerns. The Commerce Department, the federal government really, has been concerned about the dwindling supply of computer chips that we have in the U.S. at this point. The Commerce Department says the supply is down to really five days at this point.

The majority of computer chips, which are used in every aspect of life, from whether it's cars, to, obviously, the computers that you use at home, and smartphones, what have you, the majority are manufactured in Asia. How big of a concern is this, not only for the government, but for average Americans who are hearing these headlines?

RAMPELL: Well, obviously, computer chips are a critical component in a range of products that Americans buy.

[09:35:04]

And the shortage of those chips, supply chain disruptions related to that have caused problems for consumers as they try to purchase cars, electronics equipment, anything else you can manage that requires those inputs.

So, yes, I think a lot of companies have started to re-evaluate their supply chains. There has been talk, of course, of reshoring. We had an announcement earlier this week about a big investment in a chip plant that's expected, I believe, in Ohio.

I think the question is how much diversification do companies need so that there is more resilience.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

RAMPELL: If you decide to reshore all of your manufacturing of something like computer chips, that doesn't necessarily help you if there is an event that takes out, you know, that particular line of supply in the United States. You need some resilience built into the system so that you have different options. If there's some severe weather event in one place, you want to be able to, you know, source from somewhere else, et cetera.

So, you know, companies are rethinking all of these kinds of things. How do they make their supply chains more resilient? How do they make sure that if there are these terrible one off events, once in a century events or otherwise that disrupt operations, what options do they have so that they can continue producing the things that they make and getting them to consumers.

SCIUTTO: And it's a rare issue of bipartisan agreement here, this idea of reshoring at least some of U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.

Catherine Rampell, thanks so much.

RAMPELL: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Turning back now to CNN's exclusive sit-down with the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco. New this hour, the Justice Department attempting to address a massive uptick in violent crime in several cities. Some breaking homicide records in 2021, fueled largely by gun violence.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, we're just a few weeks into the year and we're seeing that uptick already.

CNN's senior justice correspondent Evan Perez is back with us.

So, Evan, what did Lisa Monaco have to say about the rise in violent crime across the country? You've been covering it extensively.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right. Exactly, Bianna. Look, this is something that's got the attention of the top officials in the Biden administration. You heard last -- just in the last few days from the attorney general, Merrick Garland, talking to the nation's mayors, saying that, you know, the Justice Department is going to have to redouble its efforts to essentially help them fight this rise in crime. And one of the things that they're doing is, you know, they're sending $139 million to fund a thousand new full time police officers in 180 police departments. They've arrested about 84,000 fugitives in federal investigations.

And Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general, talked a little bit more about those efforts that they're making.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) LISA MONACO, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: What we are doing is applying every tool that we can to address the violent crime rise that we have seen in this country. That means going after and targeting the most violent offenders, and working with our state and local law enforcement partners to lock those people up. That means going after gun violence and the elicit trafficking of guns that fuel it.

PEREZ: One of the big problems that we've seen, you know, the FBI statistics tell us that the number of intentional killings of police officers is at a 20-year high, 73 officers died on the job in intentional killings in 2020.

What is going on with that? And whatever we're doing, it appears to not be working with regard to the violence against police officers.

MONACO: Look, it's an absolute tragedy. So, what we are doing is trying to support state and local law enforcement in every way we know how. That means adding cops to communities, making sure that they're working in the communities, walking the beat, building trust in the communities that we serve.

Look, every police professional that I talk to says building trust with the community they serve is essential to public safety. But, importantly, Evan, we've got to go after the elicit trafficking of firearms that end up fueling this violence.

What we've seen is that the guns we're recovering at crime scenes, in violent crimes, haven't originated in those cities, in those communities, where we're recovering those guns. They're coming in from elsewhere.

PEREZ: One of the issues that arose after the murder of George Floyd was a call for reform of how policing is done in this country. And, you know, you -- we've seen criticism from folks who say that, you know, some of that criticism of police and some of that sort of undercutting the police has given rise to the -- to the crime that we're seeing right now.

Do you agree with that? Do you buy that that's what's happening?

MONACO: Well, look, let's just be very clear, cutting funding to law enforcement when crime is on the rise does not make sense.

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That's a mistake. So, what we're doing is we are finding ways to give more resources to law enforcement.

PEREZ: What do you tell Americans who, you know, who want better police protection but also don't want a repeat of incidents like the one that took George Floyd's life?

MONACO: This is not an either/or, Evan. We have got to do both. We've got to support the law enforcement efforts in this country to go after violent crime. We've got to give them the tools and the resources to do that. (END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREZ: And, guys, look, you hear that from the deputy attorney general response to the cries that you heard from certain people to defund the police.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

PEREZ: But clearly the department is also still pushing to do more oversight of police. And despite the fact that the reform efforts have kind of died here in Washington.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Clearly to have oversight, but making it clear defund is not their message. They want to go the opposite way, or at least try to.

PEREZ: Right.

SCIUTTO: Evan Perez, thanks very much.

PEREZ: Sure.

SCIUTTO: Coming up next, he is one of the loudest voices when it comes to spreading the big lie. What the "InfoWars" founder, Alex Jones, is saying about his meeting with the January 6th committee.

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[09:45:41]

GOLODRYGA: Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is confirming that he met with the House select committee investigating the January 6th insurrection.

SCIUTTO: CNN law enforcement correspondent Whitney Wild is following all of this.

Whitney, Jones said he pleaded the Fifth almost 100 times, not quite cooperation, because he was afraid the committee, he says, would twist his words or that he might perjure himself.

What more do we know about this testimony, and did it help at all?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: Well, the fact that he's cooperating is another clear sign that there are people within Trump's orbit who are cooperating with this committee and at least giving them some information. I mean he was pretty clear in his radio show that they asked him a lot of questions about who he was talking to within the Trump orbit, and how that money, those millions of dollars funneled into the rally. And based on what he said on his radio show, he did supply some amount of information.

Here's a quote from his radio show yesterday where he talked about that interview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ALEX JONES, RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY THEORIST: I just had a very intense experience being interrogated by the January 6th committee lawyers. They were polite, but they were dogged.

But I said this, my lawyer told me, almost 100 times today, during the interrogation, on advice of counsel, I am asserting my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WILD: Again, one of the things he talked about in his radio show is that he was asked multiple times, who was your contact in the White House? Who were you talking to in Trump's orbit? And he repeatedly said that he was talking to another person we know who's gone in front of the committee, a woman named Caroline Wren, a critical fundraiser here. So, clearly, the committee got something out of Alex Jones.

Further, it's very obvious that they continue to drill down on this key piece of evidence, which is that the flow of money into this rally. Alex Jones said over and over in his podcast that he denounced any plans for violence. He thought that going into the Capitol was just stupid. He stead over and over he had no advance knowledge that there were any plans for violence.

But he did say, and I thought this part was pretty interesting, that he -- that there had been some planning for him to lead a march over to the Capitol. So there's this question about how this march manifested, and whether or not it was sanctioned by the National Park Service in terms of actually getting a permit for the march. And pretty obvious that there was some kind of planning for a march. That the intention was to get all these people from the rally over to another permitted event at the Capitol grounds, which was hosted by Ali Alexander. So, Alex Jones talked about that in his -- in his radio show and then he also said that on January 6th the former president was very excited about the size of the crowd at the Capitol.

Back to you.

GOLODRYGA: Well, listen, Whitney, not to read too much into it, but he may have said one thing to his audience, right, but who knows what he said, you know, in more detail behind closed doors before the committee members.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

WILD: Exactly.

GOLODRYGA: Right. Right.

WILD: And I would think that by summer or by the time that this, you know, this report is wrapped up sometime in the fall, we'll have a pretty good idea of what he actually said.

Back to you.

GOLODRYGA: Whitney Wild, thank you, as always. And up next, it escalated from tweets that imagined Apple's CEO Tim

Cook as her husband, to emailing him images of a loaded gun. Now a woman has been hit by a restraining order. We'll have more details coming up next.

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[09:53:38]

SCIUTTO: Apple has now been granted a restraining order against a woman accused of stalking, harassing and threatening CEO Tim Cook for more than a year.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, it's quite disturbing.

CNN's Alison Kosik joins us from New York.

Alison, as we're just getting the initial bits of details about this woman's alleged behavior, it's just frightening. What more are we learning?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we're learning a lot from these -- the filing in court last week, Bianna and Jim. You know, it's not every day you hear about one of the most well-known CEOs. His company taking legal action against a stalker.

Now, we have learned that Apple won a restraining order against the woman who's allegedly been threatening, harassing and stalking Apple's CEO Tim Cook for more than a year. In the court papers, Apple says the woman has exhibited erratic, threatening and bizarre behavior.

Now, CNN is not identifying the woman. But what we can tell you is that she allegedly drove across the country from Virginia to California to make personal contact with Cook. And, on two occasions, she trespassed on his property. The documents say she claimed to be his wife and said they had twins together.

In the filing, Apple said it believed the woman may still be armed in the south bay area of San Francisco and that she intends to return to the CEO's residence or locate him in the future.

The court documents also say that for more than a year, the woman sent threats directly to Cook through his e-mail, on Twitter as well, where she included pictures of a loaded gun and ammunition.

[09:55:02]

She would actually tag Cook in these tweets and write private messages that insinuated she wanted a sexual relationship.

Now, about those e-mails, between October and November 2020, the filing says the woman sent the CEO nearly 200 e-mails that show the significant escalation in tone, becoming threatening and highly disturbing. And it was in October of last year that police actually detained her after she trespassed on his private property where she allegedly told law enforcement she could be violent. Now, there is a hearing that's scheduled on March 29th, and we will

learn whether this order will be extended or not.

Bianna and Jim.

SCIUTTO: Disturbing threats for sure.

KOSIK: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Alison Kosik, thanks very much.

KOSIK: And still to come, in our next hour, new reporting this morning. The U.S. and its allies considering troop movements before a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine to shore up eastern European allies. We're going to have the details after a short break.

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