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Gun Violence; January 6 Committee Hearing Focuses on Big Lie. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired June 13, 2022 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:23]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Hello. I'm Victor Blackwell welcome to CNN NEWSROOM. Alisyn is off today.

In today's hearing, the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection presented repeated examples of then-President Donald Trump persisting with the lie that he won the 2020 election. Now, his own people in the White House and on his campaign kept telling him he lost. That included his campaign manager, who in a deposition video recalled what he told Trump about his prospects just after Election Day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL STEPIEN, TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Very, very, very bleak.

I -- we told him -- the group that went over there outlined my belief in chances for success at this point. My belief is that it was a very, very mean -- 5 to 10 percent. It was not a very good, optimistic outlook.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Well, the committee then showed how former President Trump continued to embrace allegations of fraud, going against his White House lawyers, who told him the accusations were baseless or not substantial enough to make a difference in the election outcome.

The Justice Department even told him there was no "there" there, as Trump kept holding on to these wild conspiracies.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

RICHARD DONOGHUE, FORMER ACTING DEPUTY GENERAL ATTORNEY: Back to the point that there were so many of these allegations that, when you gave him a very direct answer on one of them, he wouldn't fight us on it, but he would move to another allegation.

He said: "There's lots of fraud going on here."

Told him flat out that much of the information he's getting is false and/or just not supported by the evidence. We look at the allegations, but they don't pan out.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: So, then former President Trump had a choice. The committee showed that the choice he made was to work with those who pushed his election lies.

Attorney General Bill Barr was shown voicing his frustration. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BARR, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: When I went into this and would tell him how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never -- there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.

My opinion then and my opinion now is that the election was not stolen by fraud. And I haven't seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that, including the "2000 Mules" movie.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Well, that hearing ended with a clip of rioters who swarmed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, repeating the lies that Donald Trump told

A warning: The language that you're going to hear is offensive.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fake election, because they're going to fucking cheat us out of our vote and put this fucking Biden in office. It ain't fucking happening today, buddy.

QUESTION: You voted?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir.

QUESTION: How did you it go?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: voted early. It went well, except for the -- can't really trust the software, Dominion software all over it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We voted. And right in the top right-hand corner of the Dominion voting machine that we used, there was a Wi-Fi symbol with five bars. So that most definitely connected to the Internet, without a doubt.

So they stole that from us twice. We're not doing it anymore.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If the election being stolen, what is it going to take?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: CNN's Ryan Nobles is with us now from Capitol Hill. Ryan, a much larger portion of the hearing today, the videos from the

testimony than we saw on Thursday night. Bill Barr, former A.G., star witness for the committee today, what did we learn from him?

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think more than anything, Victor, what the committee attempted to try and demonstrate today is that the president was told multiple times by people who he trusted, who -- people that he put in positions of power that his idea that somehow the election was stolen from him was just not based in any fact.

And there's no doubt that Bill Barr, the former attorney general, was the star witness in that regard, the committee showing clip after clip where he emphatically stated for the record that he never saw any evidence of fraud, and even went a step further to say that the type of conspiracies that the former president and those around him are peddling were lunacy, that they just were not based in reality.

And then, of course, Barr's testimony was backed up by Trump's former campaign manager Bill Stepien, who also testified to that effect that he told the president repeatedly that he just did not think that he had won the election, that there was not enough fraud to overturn the election results.

And then what we saw happen through this testimony, Victor, is that these voices, the voices that Trump had at one time entrusted who were telling him things he didn't want to hear, were quickly removed from his sphere of influence, and they were replaced with people like Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and others who were essentially telling Trump what he wanted to hear.

[14:05:16]

And, Victor, this is an important foundation of the January 6 Committee's argument, because they want to show that Trump knew he was peddling a lie, this wasn't something he actually believed.

BLACKWELL: Yes, the committee also near the end of the hearing pointed out just how much money the former president, hundreds of millions of dollars, raised off these election lies.

NOBLES: Yes, and it's a key question, because, of course, people are going to ask whether or not a crime was committed here.

Now, the committee didn't come out and say it, but they certainly laid the groundwork for that question to be asked. Listen to what one of their senior investigators, Amanda Wick, said about what they discovered about the way Trump and his associates raised money.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANDA WICK, SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE COUNSEL: The claims that the election was stolen were so successful, President Trump and his allies raised $250 million, nearly $100 million in the first week after the election. On November 9, 2020, President Trump created a separate entity called

the Save America PAC. Most of the money raised went to this newly created PAC, not to election-related litigation.

The evidence developed by the Select Committee highlights how the Trump campaign aggressively pushed false election claims to fund- raise, telling supporters it would be used to fight voter fraud that did not exist.

The e-mails continued through January 6.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOBLES: And what's important about this, Victor, it's not just that they were peddling the big lie through these e-mails, fund-raising solicitations.

They also weren't using that money for the purpose of trying to truly find election fraud or fight these court battles. That's evidence of fraud. The next question is, does the Department of Justice do anything with it, Victor?

BLACKWELL: Ryan Nobles with the crucial question there from Capitol Hill, thank you very much.

Let's bring it now John Avlon. He's CNN senior political analyst. Elliot Williams, CNN legal analyst and a former federal prosecutor, and Republican strategist Rina Shah. She's senior adviser to the group Republican Women For Progress.

Welcome to everyone.

John, let me start with you.

And I want to play who I described as the star witness today, former A.G. Bill Barr, and what he describes as the former president's detachment from reality, and what team normal, as they describe themselves, what they were telling him what's happening as it related to the election.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

BLACKWELL: Let's play it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARR: I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has lost contact with -- he has become detached from reality, if he really believes this stuff.

On the other hand, when I went into this and would tell him how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never -- there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.

My opinion then and my opinion now is that the election was not stolen by fraud. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: How effective was the case they put on today?

AVLON: Enormously effective, because it was Republicans, Trump loyalists all, members of his administration, his attorney general, members of the senior campaign team, who were all telling him from the beginning that there is no evidence of mass fraud, that this insistence you have of the election being stolen is not true, not rooted in reality, detached from reality.

Those are the voices you need to hear.

Now, the problem of course, is Bill Barr ultimately resigned from the Department of Justice because he was unwilling to go forward. But he didn't speak out as clearly and forcefully while this was being fomented. Neither did some of the other voices we heard from. It took them being under oath in an investigation.

But if anything's going to break the fever, it's going to be listening to Republicans who are Trump loyalists standing up and saying, we always knew that it was a lie, and Trump insisted to lie otherwise. And the people who were ultimately the most abused by the lie were those folks who believed him and stormed the Capitol, ultimately.

BLACKWELL: Elliot, one line there, a bit of what we heard from Bill Barr is that if he really believes this stuff.

If your audience is the DOJ, and you're trying to convince them to file criminal charges of fraud here, how close can they get by saying, listen, all these rational people told him it wasn't true? Are they able to, is it necessary to prove that he actually believed that he lost the election and was still perpetuating the lie?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Right.

It's not just, Victor, that they're rational people. These are his legal advisers. There's a quote from Richard Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general of the Justice Department that you showed at the beginning, that he's -- Richard Donoghue says. I told him outright or I think I told him flat out were his words.

Victor, in a number of criminal statutes, fraud, campaign-related crimes and so on, it's not enough to have just done the thing you're accused of doing. You have to act with what's called criminal intent. You have to know that the thing you're doing is wrong.

And, here, someone has to know that they actually lost an election. It's not a crime, believe it or not, to believe conspiracy theories or even to have lost to an election and think you lost based on nonsense that you're hearing.

[14:10:03]

The crime comes when you know you lost, and yet still continue to push and act and so on. And so it was very deliberate on the part of the committee to keep making the case that legal advisers, not just friends and family, were telling him, based on our analysis of this and our judgment and experience, you have lost this election.

And with enough of those, it becomes very hard not to say that this individual broke -- violated the law.

BLACKWELL: And, Rina, as we discussed with Ryan there, raised huge sums of money of this lie, hundreds of millions of dollars.

A member of the committee who asked many of the questions today, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, was just on with Jake and said that Kimberly Guilfoyle benefited personally, profited personally from some of the money raised, was paid $60,000 for a two-and-a-half minute speech at the Ellipse on the rally day, 60 grand for that speech.

Your reaction to what she calls a grift?

RINA SHAH, FOUNDER, REPUBLICAN WOMAN FOR PROGRESS: Yes, it seems the word of the day, Victor, is grift.

And that is exactly what Congresswoman Lofgren did by putting a bow on today's hearing, essentially saying the big lie was also leading to the big ripoff. And so Don the con strikes again. This is not surprising to me, because I was on the receiving end of many of those e-mails.

I'm a longtime registered Republican voter. And I can tell I wasn't surprised at all to hear that there were sometimes up to 25 e-mails per day going out to small donors in the Trump universe, saying, you have got to step up, you have got to fight back and help us do these challenges.

So the average voter was out there thinking, yes, I'm paying into something legal here, not paying for the production of a rally in front of White House Ellipse that's going to lead people to later march from there onto the U.S. Capitol and lead to an insurrection.

So I'm here in a moment where I say this, as a longtime campaign professional too. I have worked hundreds of initiatives over the years and messages that I have written personally that have never sounded like this, that have never looked to trick people on the other end and say, give to this, but direct money to that.

And the challenge here is for the viewers now in the hearings that follow to understand exactly that the committee is giving us just the facts. But these facts are, frankly, very dangerous to American democracy.

AVLON: Sure.

BLACKWELL: John?

AVLON: A hundred percent.

I mean, this is all about undermining American democracy. It made insisting on the truth look like a partisan act over the past two years. And I'm laughing at the Kimberly Guilfoyle $60,000 in two minutes, 30 seconds, a minute. I don't think even Elvis got that in his prime.

But there's a fundamental issue here, right? If someone insists the moon is made out of cheese, you don't hire him to run NASA. And if they grift people to the extent that this grift was occurring, you can say those folks were willfully fooled. But there's malice in that, it would seem to me.

And it was at the expense of our democracy. This isn't just partisan cheerleading and the partisan economy busting, singing all out. This aims to the heart of our democracy and our ability to reason together.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

Elliot, on this, the money that was raised through this Election Defense Fund, which one of the investigators said couldn't even find that it even existed, what is the legal vulnerability, exposure for the campaign officials who testified, we knew this was a lie, who did not resign, but still were part of the campaign as this money was coming in.

WILLIAMS: Right.

Again, it all -- this all gets back to intent. And it helps build a case perhaps against some of them if they're making statements to federal officials or continuing to push falsehoods, but also helps to strengthen the case against the president, where it adds to the fact that they were aware of the fact that the campaign had lost and were continuing to push things.

It all comes back to criminal intent in virtually -- virtually in any crime, but particularly here, and that's what this helps establish.

BLACKWELL: All right, I want to play a little more of the testimony that we heard today.

This is from Mr. Schmidt here making the connection from the lies to what we saw on January 6 at the Capitol.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AL SCHMIDT, FORMER PHILADELPHIA CITY COMMISSIONER: After the president tweeted at me by name, calling me out the way that he did, the threats became much more specific, much more graphic, and included not just me by name, but included members of my family by name, their ages, our address, pictures of our home, just every bit of detail that you can imagine.

That was what changed with that tweet.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Yes, Rina, this is a bit of what you just described, being the target of some of these attacks. And we saw on Thursday, a tweet can be quite influential with a person

standing there with a bullhorn reading it there at the crowd. What do you make of what you heard from that election official in Pennsylvania?

SHAH: It's a sad, telling tale of the current state a lot of hyperpartisanship we have in this country, without a doubt.

[14:15:03]

But the biggest thing here to me is the fact that the 45th president of the United States wasn't just preying on the low-information voter out there. He himself proved to be the biggest low information voter himself.

So, having said that, I will say this. He knew he didn't have to really get his supporters to have anything pass a sniff test. He knew he could just give it to them, and give it to them often, and up the ante on every single message he was putting out for them to not only be alarmed and fearful about the direction that the country was going, but the very fact that they felt something was being stolen right from underneath their eyes.

And so that's really the greatest challenge we have, even after these hearings continue, is, how do we talk to our fellow Americans about a con job that didn't just happen after one night of an abbreviated Rudy Giuliani at a cocktail party? This was days of concerted effort to say we have got to find something to tell people that Donald Trump is going to get a second term.

And that's what his supporters went to Washington with on January 6. That is the greatest challenge we have to overcome as a country and as fellow Americans.

(CROSSTALK)

BLACKWELL: Rina Shah, Elliot Williams.

Go ahead. Go ahead, Elliot, really quickly.

WILLIAMS: One really, really quick point here, if you notice, the committee ended with people on January 6 saying, we believe there was fraud and there was Wi-Fi on the voting machines and all of that.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

WILLIAMS: It helps establish the case because people bought it. It was -- these statements have impact both in terms of public safety, but also in terms of what voters or, frankly, rioters believed on the day of January 6.

BLACKWELL: Yes, it certainly did.

Elliot Williams, Rina Shah and John Avlon, thank you all.

We will get into more from what we heard today throughout the show. Listen, there's a lot going on today. Prices on everyday goods are

soaring, and U.S. stocks are tanking. Investors are bracing for another rate hike.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:21:18]

BLACKWELL: U.S. stocks are tanking today, gas prices soaring to new highs across the country.

CNN business correspondent Alison Kosik is with me now.

So, Alison, let's start with the markets. Let's put up the Big Board. Do we have it? We are down more than 700 points today, S&P 500 falling into bear market territory.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It's actually off the lows of the session.

(CROSSTALK)

BLACKWELL: Yes. So they were down, what, more than 800 points earlier today.

KOSIK: Yes. Yes.

BLACKWELL: So, how much of what we're watching is looking ahead to the Fed meeting in a couple of days?

KOSIK: I think a lot of this is.

I'm going to give you an analogy. Think of this as a situation if you have ever been sick, and you know you have to take medicine and you know that medicine is going to give you side effects most likely. That's what you're seeing. You're seeing that nervousness play out on Wall Street, because think of the economy as the patient and inflation as the illness here.

And the possible cure is a hike in interest rates, a bigger clip of a hike of an interest rate. That is what is making Wall Street nervous at this point. The concern is, is that the side effects could be that the Fed could inadvertently plunge the U.S. economy into a recession, because those higher interest rates will inevitably slow down the economy.

The concern is it will slow it down to a downward trend, even though we know that that is probably the cure. What is the Fed going to do this week? Well, guess what? We see the doctor, the Fed, this week. And that's why you're seeing this nervousness today, because, on Wednesday, the Fed is going to decide whether or not it's going to hike interest rates at a stronger clip, more than what the Fed intended to do back in May at its last meeting.

So, in some ways, it would be a surprise hike. Wall Street doesn't like surprises, although we have to look at what the issue is here. The issue and you're seeing the bounce off happening today is Friday's inflation report at the consumer level, telling us what a lot of us already know. Gas prices are high. Airline prices are -- airfares are high. Grocery prices are high.

And so all of these things, consumers are feeling it, and the Fed knows it has to get a handle on it. And the only way to tame inflation in the fastest way is to hike interest rates.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

Gas prices over the weekend crossed that $5-a-gallon threshold.

KOSIK: Right.

BLACKWELL: And even if you don't have a car, don't fill up a tank, you're paying for it.

KOSIK: Yes. I mean, you know what, if you take your vacation, you're feeling it, because those airfares are higher.

Cost of goods are higher because retailers have to transport those goods. And diesel prices are higher as well. And then you think about more money is spent at the pump. It means your budget is getting smaller and smaller. You have less discretionary income. You're not going out to eat at restaurants.

You're not buying that extra thing at the store. And you're foregoing that kind of spending. So, in that way, not just the average person who drives is feeling that inflation from gas prices.

BLACKWELL: All right, Alison Kosik explaining all of it for us, thank you.

KOSIK: You got it. My pleasure.

BLACKWELL: Right now, Attorney General Merrick Garland is speaking about efforts to prevent gun violence after another weekend plagued by mass shootings across this country.

The Justice Department's plan, we will get into that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:28:58]

BLACKWELL: That bipartisan group of senators working on gun safety legislation, they have reached an agreement, a framework, they're calling it.

But keeping at least 10 Republicans on board as the bill is written, that's not guaranteed. And, again, we're coming off another weekend of deadly gun violence across the country, at least 12 mass shootings in the U.S.

In Gary, Indiana, two people were killed, four others injured after a nightclub shooting. In Denver, six people were shot at a house party. Two of those victims died. Louisville, Kentucky, five teenagers were shot near a pedestrian bridge. In Amarillo, Texas, an 8-year-old boy was shot in an apparent road rage incident. Police said that the child is in critical condition.

CNN's Omar Jimenez is in Chicago.

Another weekend of gun violence in that city too. What do you know?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Victor.

Well, these are people doing everyday things, walking on the sidewalk, sitting in a restaurant, sitting on their front porch, when shooters opened fire. In total, we have seen here at least six people killed and over 20 injured over the course of this weekend.

And, believe it or not, murders and shootings are down in the city this year, but that's only compared to what was a record

[14:30:00]