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Russia and China Meet; Sources: Trump and Jim Jordan Spoke on Phone Morning of January 6. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired February 04, 2022 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Heart disease is the number one killer of women, claiming a woman's life every 80 seconds, according to the American Heart Association.

So, to all the moms, daughters, sisters out there, please, take good care of yourself.

And that does it for me on this Friday. I will see you back here on Monday. Until then, you can join me on Twitter at @AnaCabrera.

Have a great weekend.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: I'm Victor Blackwell. Welcome to NEWSROOM.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: And I'm Alisyn Camerota.

We do have breaking news on the January 6 investigation. CNN can report that the House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol now has White House records that reveal details of a phone call Donald Trump made to Republican Congressman Jim Jordan on the morning of the insurrection.

BLACKWELL: Two sources who have reviewed the call records tell CNN that Trump spoke on a phone at the White House residence with Jordan for 10 minutes that morning.

And that afternoon, Jordan took to the House floor to object to the certification of President Joe Biden's Electoral College win and pro- Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol.

Let's bring in now CNN's Ryan Nobles.

Ryan, what more can you tell us about this call?

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Victor and Alisyn, the communication that Jim Jordan had with Donald Trump on January 6 has long been of interest to not only the January 6 Select Committee, but others who've been investigating the events of that day. And for the first time, we can learn through these White House call

records that were part of that information of documents that was part of the National Archives that was then transferred to the select committee that there is entries on a call record that show that the former president asked to speak to Jim Jordan on the phone and that the pair spoke for 10 minutes while Trump was in the White House on the morning of January 6.

Now, this is significant for a number of reasons, the first being that Jordan has been completely evasive as to his communication, how many times he spoke to the president, how long they spoke for and what they even talked about.

And he has contradicted himself numerous times as to the number of times that they spoke. For instance, this is what Jim Jordan said back in July about the conversations that he had with Donald Trump on January 6. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): I spoke with him on January 6. I mean, I talk with President Trump all the time.

QUESTION: On January 6, Did you speak with him before, during or after the Capitol was attacked?

JORDAN: I'd have to go -- I spoke with him that day after, I think after. I don't know if I spoke with him in the morning or not. I just don't know.

I'd have to go back and -- and I mean, I don't -- I don't -- I don't know when those conversations happened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOBLES: Now, that's Jordan at that time saying he may have spoke with Trump in the morning, saying that he didn't recollect it.

He was then asked the same series of questions during the meeting of the House Rules Committee A few months ago. And then Jordan said at that time, he only remember talking to Trump after the attack and said that he didn't think that he talked to him before and that he'd been very clear about that.

Well, he's been anything but. And to add to all of this, our reporter Annie Grayer spoke with Jim Jordan today, informed him that we were made aware of these White House call records and asked him to respond, and Jordan said that he, again, couldn't remember. And he said that the only time he specifically remember talking to the president on that day was when he walked off the floor of the House of Representatives on January 6.

Well, keep in mind, he's never revealed that information before. So that is completely new and a different story than he's told in previous incarnations. He also told Annie today that he believes that he spoke to the former president a number of times on January 6. So this is the first tangible evidence that we have of communication between Trump and Jordan on that day. Obviously, the committee is very interested in the content of that call, what they spoke about. That's one of the reasons that they want Jordan to appear before their committee.

Jordan previously said that he had nothing to hide. He has since stonewalled the committee and said that he will not appear before them. Now, keep in mind, the committee does have the option of issuing subpoenas. They're wrestling with that decision right now, because they fear that it may be difficult from a legal perspective to subpoena their own members of Congress to appear before them.

So, finding out this information, that is something that is very important to this committee, but it's clear that it will still be difficult to nail everything down that they're looking for. But this is a huge piece of that puzzle -- Victor and Alisyn.

BLACKWELL: Ryan Nobles on Capitol Hill with the exclusive reporting.

Stick around.

Let's bring in now CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig, former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Gloria Borger, CNN's chief political analyst.

Gloria, let me start with you.

No wonder that answer about when did you speak with the president was stammering and stuttering; 10 minutes, there was a conversation that day, of all days. Is that something that slips your mind? What's your reaction to this report?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: It does.

Look, it is the president of the United States. It's the morning of January 6. And how do you forget a 10-minute phone call with the president on that day, of all days? I mean, you would never forget a 10-minute phone call with the president under any circumstance, but on that day?

[14:05:09]

So, his answers have been evasive, as Ryan says. They have been inconsistent. And the committee now has a real problem. What do they do? If they subpoena him, and he still says, I'm not going to appear, then they have to be willing to follow up with that. And they have to be willing to say, we're going to hold you in contempt.

And that drags things out. And it causes a lot of problems internally inside the House of Representatives. So there's a lot of discussion inside the committee about that. Some would like to do it. Some would not. But this news that Ryan and Annie are breaking is very important.

It's a very important piece of the puzzle. What was Donald Trump's state of mind the morning of that -- of the insurrection? What was he saying to Jim Jordan? Did he want him to do anything for him? What was Jim Jordan telling him?

I mean, this is a crucial, crucial part of the puzzle.

CAMEROTA: Yes, so, Elie, it's crucial information, as Gloria just said, so why is it legally dicey?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, first of all, Alisyn, this 10- minute conversation is so important because this is no idle chitchat. A 10-minute phone conversation is a long time. You can accomplish a lot in 10 minutes.

This show is five minutes' old. So if you take everything going back to where we started, and double it, that's how long these two talked for. It's so important.

Now, the committee has to decide, are they going to subpoena Jim Jordan? The only way they're ever going to find out what happened, what was said in that call is from one of two people, Donald Trump, Jim Jordan. They haven't even begun to go down the road of Donald Trump. They're unlikely to ever hear anything from him.

They have to decide whether they want to subpoena Jim Jordan. And, as Gloria said, Jim Jordan is likely to ignore that subpoena. Then the committee has to decide if they're willing, able to proceed against him on contempt. And that opens up a whole can of worms. Legally, there's no impediment.

This is a political calculation by the committee.

BLACKWELL: And, Ryan, we watched for months, not many, considering how long it takes for some cases to go to the Supreme Court, but, for months, the Trump attorneys fight the release of these documents from the National Archives, and this record, the records of this call, the fruit of that decision from the Supreme Court.

NOBLES: Yes, it's such an important point, Victor.

And we should also point out that the president and his legal team were insistent that they wanted to keep this information secret, willing to go all the way to the Supreme Court to prevent it from getting out.

And what we are learning here is just a small slice of the troves of information that is still coming into the committee as we speak. The chairman, Bennie Thompson, told us this week that they are literally parceling through thousands and thousands of pages of documents, and that the National Archives had to add 20 additional staffers in order just to piece through all the material so that they could get it to the committee.

So this is just one tiny example of what the committee's learned at this point. There could be a lot of other information. And then when you couple it with the information that they received from Mark Meadows when he initially agreed to cooperate before backing away, the fact that they have talked to more than 400 witnesses, one interesting thing the committee revealed to us the other day was that they have followed up on 375 tips to their hot line.

So, they have gotten thousands of tips, but there has been 375 tips that they felt were necessary to follow up and ask more questions about. There is just so much information the committee has at their disposal.

And one of the things that members tell me time and time again, Victor and Alisyn, is that, yes, they're being stonewalled by people like Jeffrey Clark. They're having a hard time getting Mark Meadows, John Eastman, people like that to get in front of them.

But they're connecting the dots in and around these people in ways that we don't have a full comprehension of. So if they don't necessarily get something directly from Jeffrey Clark, well, they talked to other people at the Department of Justice at that time. They have talked to other associates of his.

They have talked to other people that can kind of close the gaps that they are not getting from these other people that have stonewalled them. And it's -- this is evidence. This is, as you say, Victor, bearing fruit that the investigation is making progress.

CAMEROTA: And, Elie, just back to my legal question for a second, because I'm still confused.

The reason that they wouldn't want to subpoena a colleague is because they don't think that the Department of Justice would support that? I mean, why is that such treacherous territory?

HONIG: Right.

So, I think it's a little bit of what goes around comes around. Let's just start with sort of straight legal here. Clearly, the committee can issue a subpoena to Jim Jordan to other members. There's this thing called the speech and debate clause, but that doesn't really apply here to protect congressmen. They can issue a subpoena.

If Jim Jordan rejects it, then they'd have to decide, the committee, whether they hold him in contempt. There's a couple concerns. One is, if we, the committee, hold Jim Jordan in contempt, will DOJ really charged Jim Jordan criminally? Will they have our back on the committee, or will they undermine us?

The DOJ is still trying to figure out whether it wants to charge Mark Meadows, and we're 50-some days in.

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So, I think there's that concern. And then there's the concern about, if we start subpoenaing other members of Congress, could this come back on us if a year from now the Republicans control Congress?

So that's a political consideration. But, legally, they really can go ahead and do this. Politically, do they have the guts for it? I don't know.

BLACKWELL: Gloria, pick up their political consideration.

BORGER: Yes, can I -- they also know in advance that Jim Jordan is not likely to comply with any subpoena.

So why are they knocking their heads against the wall if they know that isn't going to occur? And it's unclear what the what the Justice Department would do. It is unclear what other members of Congress would do, because maybe there are some Democrats who say, wait a minute, I don't want to vote on a contempt charge because the tables might turn after the next election.

So it's very complex, and there are some members who believe that you have to do this. And there are others who are saying wait. And Bennie Thompson has said, I'd sign a subpoena. But I think the committee has to kind of all be on the same page.

But all of that was said, I think, before these documents came into their possession, and this is such a crucial piece of information that they may say, we have no choice.

I mean, we just -- we just don't know at this point.

CAMEROTA: OK. Elie Honig, Gloria Borger, Ryan Nobles, thank you with all this breaking news.

BORGER: Sure.

CAMEROTA: OK, meanwhile, President Biden celebrated an unexpectedly good January jobs report that showed significant growth, despite the surging Omicron variant.

The U.S. economy added 467,000 new jobs last month. The unemployment rate ticked up just slightly to 4 percent. But that's for a positive reason.

BLACKWELL: We will get into that in a moment.

The president said these numbers reflect historic economic progress, but he also acknowledged the struggle that many Americans face as the pandemic enters its third year.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I know that, after almost two years, the physical and emotional weight of the pandemic has been incredibly difficult to bear for so many people.

But here's the good news. We have the tools to save lives and to keep businesses open and keep schools open, keep workers on the job, and sustain this historic economic comeback.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: CNN business reporter Matt Egan and CNN senior White House correspondent Phil Mattingly, they're both with us now. Matt, let's start with you, because the predictions, the forecasts

were way off, hundreds of thousands of jobs off. What does this, first, just the number, 467,000, tell us about the economy?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: All right. Well, happy Friday, guys.

BLACKWELL: Thank you.

EGAN: And I mean it, because we were really bracing for the worst this morning. And, instead, we kind of got the best-case scenario, 467,000 jobs added in January, despite Omicron.

Now, that is remarkable, because the Wall Street was -- the White House was preparing the public for a bad number here. Some Wall Street banks were predicting a loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. Thankfully, just about everyone got it wrong.

And it's not just about January. The jobs market actually did better last year than we realized. The government upwardly revised both November and December sharply by 708,000 jobs. That totally changes the narrative here.

What looked like a late-year slowdown was actually really steady growth. And after these revisions, we can now say that the economy added 6.6 million jobs during President Biden's first 12 months in office. That's easily the best first-year record for any president on record.

CAMEROTA: And, quickly, why did the unemployment rate go up with that good number?

EGAN: Yes, so the unemployment rate did go up to 4 percent. And at first blush, that looked like, oh, that's not good, but -- because also it was the first time that the rate went up since last June. But that was actually for good reasons.

It's because more people got off the sidelines, and they started looking for work. So that's why the unemployment rate went up. If you put all of it together, it paints the picture of a jobs market that is not just resilient. It's on fire.

BLACKWELL: And, Phil, let's go to you.

The president and White House could have used those revised numbers back in December in January, instead of taking the P.R. hit, but now 6.6 million jobs added in that first year, a record.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and, look, I think this is something when you talk to administration officials, part of the frustration over the course of the last almost six or seven months has been we have consistently seen upward revisions month after month.

Matt's covered them every single month. And it just kind of underscores the difficulty of data and survey collection in the moment of a pandemic. But I think what it underscores more than anything else right now, I

think you guys played the perfect sound from the president leading into this segment in terms of what the White House view is right now. Yes, there are very real economic concerns that still exist for everyday people, most notably, prices that are at a 39-year high and inflation that hasn't shown any significant deceleration or signs that it's going to decelerate, at least over the course of the next couple of months.

However, what the administration is looking at right now is, even though people are exhausted, even though they're tired, even though they're totally tuned out, fundamentals on the economic side of things are very well-aligned and probably better than any other country in the world coming out of the pandemic.

[14:15:12]

And with Omicron's -- this Omicron surge not only coming to an end, but dropping dramatically, that opens the door to ease a lot of the very issues that have been accelerating inflation over the course of the last several months, whether it's supply chain bottlenecks, whether it's the demand shocks we have seen when people aren't going out to purchase many of their items, and instead are ordering them right now.

So, you pair those things together, and I think the view has always been that everything is interconnected. Pandemic, economy, they go one and one on this type of moment. And the president is looking at this moment right now and saying, this is a moment to turn a corner.

And the economy is ready to turn that corner. People just need to believe that it's actually happening, guys.

BLACKWELL: All right, Phil Mattingly, Matt Egan, thank you.

Well, the Games have begun. But these Olympics open with a diplomatic boycott and major global tensions. We are live from Beijing.

CAMEROTA: And the jury in the Michael Avenatti trial asks the judge for help after one juror reportedly refuses to examine evidence. Now what?

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BLACKWELL: Well, minutes ago, the CDC adviser signed off on the approval of Moderna's COVID vaccine on a vote of 13 to zero. The FDA gave its official approval on Monday.

Well, now, Moderna needs just the final nod from the CDC director to make a full approval official.

CAMEROTA: Moderna had been allowed under an emergency use authorization. A CDC official pointed out that research suggests some people may be more willing to get vaccinated following full FDA approval.

BLACKWELL: All right, the 2022 Winter Olympics are officially now under way in Beijing. The two weeks of competition are taking place in a complicated geopolitical climate.

The pandemic is lingering over the Games, China is restricting athletes to an Olympic bubble and limiting the number of spectators and venues.

CAMEROTA: The U.S. and several allies are engaging in a diplomatic boycott over China's human rights abuses. But the Russia-China partnership is on full display.

Chinese President Xi Jinping stood shoulder to shoulder with Russia's Vladimir Putin at their meeting ahead of the Opening Ceremony.

Joining us now is CNN's Steven Jiang live in Beijing.

Steven, these are all unusual dynamics on full display. So what's happening?

STEVEN JIANG, CNN BEIJING BUREAU CHIEF: Well, Alisyn, it played out probably most directly in my own experience attending the Opening Ceremony as a spectator.

Just to be eligible to go, you had to be in Beijing for 14 days before the event fully vaccinated and boosted and taking four COVID tests, two before and two after the event. Then, on the day, there was multiple security checks, a lot of walking and waiting inside a security bubble before you even reach the stadium, then seated outdoors for four hours in temperature as low as 15 degrees Fahrenheit.

Of course, the show was spectacular, directed by one of China's most famous movie directors, a lot of pageantry, fireworks, combining cultural elements with high-tech presentations.

But one thing that really struck me is, for a government that's been lashing out at the U.S. for -- quote, unquote -- "politicizing the Games" by launching that diplomatic boycott, they seemed to be sending a lot of very political messages, with their state TV announcers calling the self-governed Democratic Taiwan China Taipei, really implying Beijing's sovereignty over the island, and then, of course, selecting a Uyghur athlete to be a torchbearer to light up the Olympic cauldron at a time when the U.S. is accusing China of committing genocide against the Uyghurs.

Then, of course, as mentioned Putin being Xi's most important VIP guest. Probably as a reflection of that, when the Russians walked out for the athlete parade, I heard a lot of Chinese audience cheering, but when the Americans walked out, it was noticeably quiet, with the Chinese spectators next to me for no apparent reason just commenting out loud: "The Americans are always so arrogant."

So it seems it's just really difficult to separate politics from sports at these Games -- Alisyn and Victor. CAMEROTA: OK, Steven Jiang, thank you for all of that.

With us now, we have CNN political and national security analyst David Sanger. He's a correspondent for "The New York Times." And CNN political analyst Josh Rogin, he's a columnist for "The Washington Post."

Great to see both of you.

David, this -- President Xi and Putin, I mean, optically them standing shoulder to shoulder, and then they announced this strategic partnership and close friendship, I think might have been their words, and they're going to be working together, they say, on space, on climate change, on artificial intelligence. How concerning should this be?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, it's pretty fascinating.

And it tells you, Alisyn, that the geopolitical gymnastics that we have seen here have really been the big opening show of the Olympics. They turned out a very lengthy document that talked about a lot of areas where they could work together. It was not a full military alliance.

But it was exactly what Nixon and Kissinger were trying to avoid when the U.S. opened its relationship with China so many decades ago. It was this nexus of a sort of anti-U.S. resistance movement. The politics of it are quite different now because China is really the superior member of this group economically, militarily, strategically.

It's got some risks for Putin. I'm sure he's happy right now, particularly as he's threatening, to have a close friend there, but he also wants to make sure that Russia is not the junior partner in this relationship.

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So it's not quite the slam dunk it might look like on TV.

BLACKWELL: Josh, let's drill down specifically on this in the context of what's happening on Ukraine's border.

They put out this statement, Xi and Putin, where they say -- quote -- "Friendship between the two states has no limits." If the U.S., the West, NATO, they're reading this, and they're trying to come up potentially with sanctions that will hurt Russia, what's it mean now to have China there with no limit to their support of Russia?

JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.

Well, Victor, I think David's right that there are real differences between what's in this document and what is likely to happen between Russia and China over the next few years, for the simple reason that these two countries, while they have an interest, an overlapping interest in opposing us and creating a world that's safe for their autocracy and thuggery and corruption, et cetera, in the end, they're more worried about each other.

And document or no document, when the Russians look south, they see a problem. And when the Chinese look north, they see an opportunity. And we could we should see this really as a propaganda document. This is -- they're joining the propaganda together, but they're always going to be frenemies.

They're always going to have opposing interest because the way I think of it is like two mafia families, right? They're like, they can work together to sort of cooperate to combine their criminal organizations. But, in the end, they can't trust each other, and they don't trust each other. So we shouldn't ignore it, but we shouldn't hype it up too much, because that's what it's meant to do.

It's meant to sort of hype up an alliance that at its core is based around two men who want to make sure that they keep their own power, and want to make sure that freedom and democracy don't spread to the people that they lord over.

CAMEROTA: It's been pretty fascinating to analyze the propaganda lately, this week, David, particularly that elaborate video that the Pentagon officials say that Russia was going to prepare.

And that is a false flag operation of some kind that -- where actors were hired and fake explosions were going off, and it was going -- they were going to try to make it appear, if we believe the American officials, and why wouldn't we, that Ukraine was the instigator, and that Russia was only responding to Ukraine's aggressions.

And so, obviously, there's more questions to be asked about this video. But -- so that's the -- that's one level of propaganda. And then we also saw -- and I don't have a picture of it to show you. But we saw President Putin when -- at the Games at the Olympic Games, when Ukraine came out, he pretended to be asleep.

He was sleeping for a few minutes, which is, I would say, low-level propaganda, but still notable. Like, Z's might as well have been coming out of his mouth at that moment.

And it's just been interesting to watch all of this. But it doesn't seem like anything's de-escalating.

SANGER: It certainly doesn't.

And, in fact, if you look at the troop formations around the Ukraine border, if anything, they're bringing in more, including, we're told, some significant missile units in Belarus that could strike in Kyiv or other parts of the country.

I think what's most interesting, Alisyn, about what you mentioned about this movie, which does not look like it was actually made yet, but they were making preparations for, is you have seen a new strategy by the United States and by Britain to call out each of these efforts, the movie, the -- other incidents they may do.

You saw the British name for people who the Russians, they believe, would try to install as sort of an acting president if they could get rid of the Ukrainian president, Zelensky.

And so what's happening is that, behind the scenes, the U.S. and the British are talking among themselves about how they can take intelligence they're picking up and make it public and try to use that to prevent the Russians from acting.

Of course, it's also raising questions about why they can't come out and show their sources and methods, which, of course, for understandable reasons, they're very reluctant to do.

We haven't seen something like this, though, in decades.

BLACKWELL: David Sanger, Josh Rogin, thank you.

SANGER: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: OK, meanwhile, Minnesota's governor says changes must be made in how police conducts search warrants after a man was shot and killed during another no-knock warrant. He was not who police were even looking for.

More on that next.

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