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Interview With Former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt; January 6 Committee Holds Public Hearing. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired June 13, 2022 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:02]

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I think it was a really dynamic legal case, frankly.

Remember, you're talking about, if the charge is something like defrauding the United States -- the United States or the electorate based on unlawful or improper purposes, you have to first prove there was some sort of agreement, a meeting of the minds, you're going to do this very thing, you're going to at least use deceptive practices in some way or fraudulent practices to promote a lie.

You have to have an overt act. That could be any of the meetings, any of the tweets, any of the speeches, any moment you say, I'm going to appeal to the American public based on this fraud.

But the thing is, it has to be for this unlawful or corrupt purpose. Corrupt could be this criminal intent, the idea of, look, I know it's wrong, and I'm going to do it anyway. Or it could be an improper purpose, meaning, you now know that you don't have any state certifying in your favor. You have exhausted all your litigation remedies, and you still want to remain in office.

Now it's an improper purpose based on what we have heard from, was it Herschmann saying, the only thing I want to hear from you is orderly transition. If you don't do that, you're now improperly there.

So you have this case, but there's still more work to be done, which is why think Congressman -- Congresswoman Liz Cheney spoke about the Eastman memo, the idea of that agreement, the notion of who was in the house, who was in the room where it happened to say, this is what we're going to do, sort of the conjuring moment of figuring out what to do next.

I think that might be the piece that is most lacking. But this was a phenomenal stride towards supporting each of those elements.

GEORGE CONWAY, CONSERVATIVE ATTORNEY: Right. And the big lie is the first step to proving that a criminal case, to prove that they knew it was a lie, and it was a lie, and that they knew it was a lie. And then they have to connect it up to what they did with it.

But I thought one interesting -- I thought that last portion of the hearing was interesting, because we tend to forget about the grift, the quarter of a billion dollars they raised by lying to people about the election and lying on multiple levels, lying about that the election was stolen, lying about that they were going to spend the money on fixing that, and lying about like that they could possibly even spend that amount of money to contest a stolen election.

A quarter of a billion dollars, you could hire every lawyer in America from that for a week or two. And so...

(LAUGHTER)

CONWAY: Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe not. I'm going to take that.

COATES: That's your billing rate. Hold on. Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

CONWAY: I will take that back. I will take that back.

But -- no, and it's funny because speech -- the First Amendment protects false speech, OK? It protects campaign lies. And it doesn't protect if you libel somebody in your harm their reputation and you do it with the requisite "New York Times" against Sullivan standard.

But there's a doctrine about commercial speech. If you lie to raise money, like the way Steve Bannon and his people did, and some of those people pled guilty to that, you're running a fund-raising scam. So now it raises an interesting legal question, which I haven't delved into about.

At what point does a political campaign's use of lies to raise this kind of money, when does that become criminal as well?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, that's the fight they're having with the Republican National Committee right now to get their -- to get fund-raising records.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: It was very, very impressive, very powerful from the committee's perspective. And we all watched it so closely. Mission accomplished today. Clearly, they knew what they were doing. They got their message across -- Jake, back to you.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Thanks, Wolf.

And I think one of the interesting points from the witness testimony we got today is there's not one person who spoke, whether former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, or Chris Stirewalt formerly of FOX News, or former U.S. Attorney BJay Pak, or former Philly Commissioner Al Schmidt, there's not one of them that would have not said something if there was actually fraud, every single one of those people there.

Al Schmidt, I know when he ran for city commissioner in Philadelphia, one of his causes was cracking down on fraud in Philadelphia elections. Every single one of them would have said it, but they looked at the evidence and they said, no, nothing there.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Because there wasn't anything there.

And Bill Stepien, who wasn't able to testify, for a good reason -- his wife is about to have a baby. But the fact that they had these clips prepared from his private testimony was very, very powerful. And on that note, he said something to the effect of, even early on, he thought it was -- there was like a 5 or 10 percent chance that they would find enough fraud for it to be for it -- to make a difference, for the president to actually come out ahead.

And it is the people who do this for a living and have done it for a living, both from the DOJ perspective and from the political perspective, who said over and over and over to the president, this is not going to happen for you -- to you -- for you.

[13:05:04]

And the more he heard it, the more agitated and angry he got it. And Bill Barr said the most angry he's ever seen him.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right.

I mean, the thing that's so striking to me is something that Ben Ginsberg repeated. It wasn't even close. This wasn't a close election. He oversaw the challenges in a close election, fewer than 1,000 votes. We're talking about 10,000 votes over multiple states. And then you had Al Schmidt saying, not 8,000 dead voters, not even eight dead voters.

I mean, so these were so wild and so outlandish and so dumb that it's really amazing that it's gone this far, and it's been -- it's gone from the fringe, to really the centerpiece of the Trump Republican movement right now is these really outlandish lies.

And the final point that the committee was making, after everything that we just saw, we heard from half-a-dozen or more Trump officials who were in the organization up until the last minute. None of them believed these lies. But all of them were present while Trump and his aides were fund-raising off of it.

All of them were there up until January 6. So they didn't -- they knew it wasn't true. But they didn't actually do anything about it.

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: They certainly didn't say anything. I mean, that's what's so striking, the words we heard today, rubbish, crazy, nuts, "bullshit" -- quote -- twice.

There's a reason the Justice Department wants all this testimony. And the committee announced this past week that, in September, they will turn over all of this testimony to the Justice Department. I think what was clear again today is that Donald Trump did not care about the facts, whether it was the grift or being the worst thing you could be in the world, a loser.

There's a scene in Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker's book where, right after the election, Hope Hicks, who was so close to Trump, comes in and says, you have to move on. Think about your legacy. And he says to her, paraphrasing, if I'm a loser, there is no legacy.

TAPPER: And one thing the president also not thinking about, and I think the hearing is really wisely focused on this, the people that he was victimizing, who are his supporters, both with the grift and also those people who came to Washington on January 6.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think it's striking the video they played at the end, where you hear the people who were here on January 6 essentially repeating either the lies they heard from Trump repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, Rudy Giuliani and elsewhere in their media silo and in their information silo.

That's the true cancer here. That's the true cancer here. The fraud of Trump telling these lies over and over again has created a cancer that continues to spread in American politics, that you have this huge group of people voting this year in a midterm election year who continue to believe this.

You have candidates running on it for Pennsylvania governor. You have a secretary state candidate in Nevada in a primary this week. So this cancer is still in the Republican Party. And it's a cancer started by this big lie. And you see it in other mistrust in the institutions, mistrust in the media, mistrust in science, mistrust in the rule of law.

This is an ultimate rule of law. I think that was the power of the Ben Ginsberg segment and the BJay Pak segment. I mean, there are ways to object. There are ways to protest. There are rules to be followed.

The other thing I think was critical today, and this is a continuation as they move on now to what they say Trump's efforts next to corrupt the Justice Department, to get the Justice Department to step in, and then Trump's efforts to corrupt Mike Pence, to get Mike Pence to step in, after he failed at the Justice Department, is how they're telling the story.

I don't know Chris Stirewalt's politics. Everybody else you have heard from today was a Republican on team Trump, his daughter, his son-in- law, his attorney general, his White House counsel, his campaign counsel, his campaign manager. Team Trump is hanging Donald Trump.

TAPPER: Yes, no, it's fascinating.

And, in fact, we all remember on election night, when the votes were still being counted. And this had been telegraphed that Donald Trump was going to do this while they were still going to -- were still counting votes. If he was up, he was going to come out early and declare victory, even though votes were still being counted.

But this is the first time we ever heard from Bill Stepien, Trump's campaign manager, who talked about how he disagreed with that strategy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL STEPIEN, TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN MANAGER: My recommendation was to say that votes were still being counted. It's too early to tell, too early to call the race, but we are proud of the race we run -- we ran. And we think we're -- think we're in good position.

The president disagreed with that. I don't recall the particular words. He thought I was wrong. He told me so, and that they were going to go in -- he was going to go in a different direction.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[13:10:00]

TAPPER: Different direction is one way to put it.

He chose to lie to the American people.

PHILLIP: Yes.

And, I mean, this is -- so, I mean, it's a little amusing, but it's also really crazy. The person who won out in that debate was a drunk Rudy Giuliani, who was the guy to say, just go out there and say you won.

I mean, that's amazing. This is the sitting president of the United States. And the person who wins the debate between his campaign manager and other officials, even Jared Kushner, who said it's maybe too early to do that, is the person who doesn't work in the White House, who's had too much to drink, and who's saying that based on nothing.

As Bill Barr said, there was no evidence to suggest that any of those claims that they were making at the time were true. And there has been no evidence ever since. I mean, that's a really extraordinary thing.

But it's also not the beginning of it. I mean, the committee played a clip from April where Trump was saying there was going to be fraud. So this has been -- this was a seed that was planted for months.

BASH: And what you just described was how Stepien talked about it, as two different teams that formed by the end of that election week, when the president, the then-president, got so frustrated with the team that he had in place during the campaign, both from the political side and the legal side, not telling him what he wanted to hear.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPIEN: There were two groups of -- we called them kind of my team and Rudy's team.

I didn't mind being characterized as being part of team normal, as reporters kind of started to do around that point in time. I said hours ago, early on, that I have been doing this for a long time. And I think, along the way, I have built up a pretty good -- I hope a good reputation for being honest and professional.

And I didn't think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional at that point in time. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So, team normal. I mean, we have some people who you were talking to earlier who would put themselves on that team, Alyssa Farah and David Urban, who had worked for Trump for many years in different capacities, who didn't think what he was doing was right.

The one thing I think it's important to point out ,to give context here, is that Bill Stepien might say that he was maybe the leader of team normal, but, as we speak, he is trying to unseat Liz Cheney in her race in Wyoming...

TAPPER: Yes.

BASH: ... by backing and working for the candidate who is pushing election lies and other falsehoods.

TAPPER: Right. And that's an important point, because there is this desire on the part of a lot of people who were involved in this world to try to pretend that they were doing the right thing.

And it may be that Bill Stepien was giving the right advice, but he stayed on as campaign manager. And I don't know who was supervising the big ripoff, as Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren pointed it out, but certainly a campaign manager of a campaign is putting out dozens of fund-raising e-mails every day asking for contributors to give funds to an operation that's actually not even happening, and people are lining their pockets.

I don't know that he can completely pretend he had nothing to do with it.

GANGEL: And let's not forget that continues to go on.

We have heard the committee say, we have heard Liz Cheney say that Trump remains a clear and present danger, because he says there's still -- he's sticking with election fraud and that it was rigged. And they're continuing to raise money on it.

I just want to mention one thing about Chris Stirewalt, who worked for FOX. When Bennie Thompson asked him who won, he didn't just answer Biden or Joe Biden. He said, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. of the great state of Delaware. It was a proclamation.

And it struck me, because how many Republican politicians have come on your shows, asked that question, and they don't even want to get close to that answer?

PHILLIP: Oh, the top three leaders in the House of Representatives on the Republican side would not answer that question as declaratively as Chris Stirewalt...

(CROSSTALK)

KING: If one-fifth of what you heard about Donald Trump today was true -- and I believe all of it was true. It was his team.

But if only one-fifth of it were true, would you hire that person? Would you want them to work in your organization? Would you go to work for them? Well, the Republican Party that continues to raise money off him should ask that question.

You mentioned the big grift or whatever you want to call it. Those fund-raisers -- read your e-mails today, I'm sure you got one or in recent days, based on what happened last week at the committee. They continue to raise money off the big lie to this day.

TAPPER: Still ahead, we're going to talk live with one of today's witnesses, the former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, who testified about graphic threats made against him and his family after he refused to support Trump's bogus claims of election fraud in Philadelphia.

Our coverage continues. We're going to squeeze in one quick break. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:19:22]

TAPPER: We just heard the January 6 Select Committee president hours of incriminating testimony driving home how then-Donald -- then- President Donald Trump willfully denied the truth and the facts and defied his aides by prematurely and falsely declaring that he won the election.

And now we're getting a new read on what the committee plans to do next.

Let's go to Manu Raju for that.

Manu, you just spoke with the chairman of the committee, Democrat Bennie Thompson.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right.

Talking to him and Zoe Lofgren about the evidence that came out in this hearing about all the money that was raised by the Trump campaign as it spread those false election claims, roughly hundreds of millions of dollars.

[13:20:00]

I asked both of them whether they saw any evidence that there was crimes committed, either by the Trump campaign or Trump himself. Both of them stopped short of saying that. They said they are a legislative committee. They will let the Justice Department decide what to do about that going forward.

Now, also going forward, it does not appear that the committee plans to bring in Bill Barr, the former attorney general, who has been featured heavily in the first two days of hearings, about his testimony about him pushing back on Donald Trump's claims.

Lofgren indicating to us that it is unlikely they're going to call him, because they said they got what they needed in that taped video deposition that lasted roughly two-and-a-half-hours. And she said, frankly, she doesn't think that Barr actually wants to sit through a live testimony.

So don't expect to hear from him. Also, don't expect to hear in person from Bill Stepien, of course, the Trump -- the former campaign adviser who was expected to be here today, but could not appear at the last minute because his wife went into labor. She said that they are satisfied with what they heard from in the video testimony, which was also featured very prominently in today's hearing, no need to bring them back.

But they do plan to press ahead and bring back other -- bring other officials forward in the coming days and weeks in two more hearings just this week. And the big question the committee was -- is -- may reveal is whether Trump himself in his campaign benefited at all from that fund-raising, personally benefited from spreading those false election claims.

Lofgren telling our colleague Annie Grayer, yes, they have evidence saying that Trump personally benefited from those false election claims. She did not provide evidence. So those will be big questions about whether they have that to back that up, to back up that claim in the hearings ahead.

TAPPER: All right, Manu, thanks so much.

Let's bring in Kaitlan Collins now at the White House.

And, Kaitlan, after everything we heard today, what do you think Trump and his allies will do next?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's hard to see how the former president will be pleased with what he saw today, Jake, obviously a parade of his former top aides and advisers from the campaign to the White House coming out and saying that they told him repeatedly he had little chance of any kind of success in his efforts to overturn the election, telling him that he was pursuing the wrong strategy by declaring victory on election night, though he ignored them and instead sided with his attorney general -- or his lawyer that they said had been drinking that night.

And they believed he was heavily intoxicated, and just making all of these claims that they believe there was no evidence of fraud, Jake. And this is something that you saw last week, how upset the former president was, with that short clip of his daughter saying that she had accepted it when Barr said there was no evidence of fraud in the election.

And now these are his top advisers coming out repeatedly saying that they told him time and time again that it was not going to work out for him the way that he wanted it to. And, Jake, also, what you saw demonstrated by this second hearing

today was just really how his inner circle was upended at that time, because Barr testified that, by December, he was having these meetings with Trump and he realized that he was not only not backing off of his election claims, he was doubling down on them, and Barr saying that he didn't see a point in sticking around much longer if the former president wasn't heeding him.

Of course, we should note the Bill Barr did not say that in his resignation letter from December, did not note that he believed the president was becoming detached from reality. But you also heard that from Bill Stepien, Jake, saying that he stepped away from the daily work that he was doing with these election challenges as Rudy Giuliani was being more and more at the forefront of this.

But we should note this private testimony that you're hearing today, it matches with a lot of our reporting at the time, but it does not match with the public statements of these figures. Bill Stepien never resigned as campaign chairman, I should note. And so, of course, Jake, a question going forward is, how does Trump respond?

And, also, we -- I should note we're hearing from my colleague Melanie Zanona that they believe they are only going to ramp up their attacks on Liz Cheney, the vice chairwoman of this panel. Of course, Bill Stepien, the one that you hear from there testifying, is working as an adviser to the person who is running against her and Wyoming, the Republican who is challenging her, someone who has been backed by Trump.

So just fold those dynamics into this as you're hearing what they're saying publicly vs. what they were saying at the time when this was actually going on and people were actually believing there was fraud in the election.

TAPPER: Well, and the candidate that Bill Stepien is working for is also pushing those election lies that Bill Stepien -- we just heard testimony from him today -- saying that they're not true.

Thanks so much, Kaitlan Collins.

Right now, we're joined by one of today's witnesses, the former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt.

Commissioner Schmidt, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it.

First of all, let's just start, because a lot of people out there who maybe haven't been following this as closely as I have, are you a Republican? Trump says you're a RINO, Republican in name only. How solid are your credentials?

AL SCHMIDT, FORMER PHILADELPHIA CITY COMMISSIONER: I am a Republican, and I have been a Republican much longer than Donald Trump has been a Republican.

And I was a Republican elected official in Philadelphia for the past 10 years.

TAPPER: And do you care about election fraud? Is that something that matters to you?

SCHMIDT: It was one of the key platforms that I ran on when I first ran and ran for reelection again and again successfully.

It was of acute interest to me, again, as a Republican responsible for running elections in Philadelphia to investigate every case that we heard, that came our way. No matter how absurd, or how farfetched it might seem, it was still worthy of our attention.

[13:25:08]

TAPPER: Well, I'm from Philadelphia. There is election fraud in Philadelphia. It happens, right? I mean, you wouldn't deny that?

SCHMIDT: Right. No.

And, in fact, the cases for the past 10 years that the president, former president, and others have referred to were all identified by me and referred to federal, state and local law enforcement for investigation and, when warranted, prosecution.

TAPPER: So, if you had found anything, you would have said something? You wouldn't be in this position you're in now. You would be testifying on behalf of Donald Trump.

SCHMIDT: Absolutely, without hesitation.

If there were allegations that had any basis in fact whatsoever of voter fraud in Philadelphia, then I would have pursued those and referred those.

TAPPER: And you faced a lot of hostility as you testified today. And you and I have talked about before threats made against not just you, but about -- against your family.

What is it like, having been out there on the tip of the spear, along with just a handful of other Republicans across the country, Raffensperger in Georgia, et cetera, et cetera, having been out there and really taken the brunt of this, to hear from people like Bill Barr or Bill Stepien, who behind the scenes obviously knew right from wrong, but were not publicly saying that?

Does it frustrate you?

SCHMIDT: It's very frustrating.

And it's something that you always suspect, right, because, in many of these cases, you have to think these people are far too smart to believe these absurd allegations. So it's somehow reassuring and unsettling, at the same time, if that's possible, to hear that they knew all along that there was no basis in fact for the allegations that they were spreading. And there are real consequences to the spreading of those lies,

whether it's threats to election administrators across the country in big cities and rural counties, Republicans and Democrats. And it takes a real toll on our democracy.

TAPPER: Well, and I also remember, when the counting was going on in the Philadelphia Convention Center, some psycho from Virginia was caught, right?

He was driving up. He had a car full of guns.

SCHMIDT: I think that's a very important point, because there were two people who came up from Virginia with guns to the Philadelphia Convention Center to straighten things out or whatever they were saying.

The Philadelphia Police Department arrested them right outside of the Convention Center with guns, handguns, and an AR-15 in their vehicle. And those two men were active on Capitol Hill on January 6. So the origin of these lies -- and I think that's an important part of today. The origin of this lie led to an attack on our democracy at that election, and then led to it again on January 6.

TAPPER: Do you think that Donald Trump should face consequences? Do you think he should be indicted? Do you think he is guilty of the seditious conspiracy that we have seen others charged with?

SCHMIDT: Well, I'm not an attorney.

But I do know that he and others should be held accountable because of what they have done and the damage they're doing to democracy.

TAPPER: There is a governor's race in Pennsylvania, your home commonwealth, and the gubernatorial nominee on the Republican side is also an election liar, Doug Mastriano, who also was here on January 6.

That must offend you.

SCHMIDT: It's a real concern, because, while you have across the country secretaries of state who are responsible for running elections in those states running for reelection now or election now, in Pennsylvania, the governor appoints the secretary of state.

So this election for governor is really going to decide who's running elections in Philly -- in Pennsylvania in 2024.

TAPPER: Well, and do you have a fear that, if Mastriano were to win, he would appoint somebody who does not adhere to the rule of law and election protocols?

SCHMIDT: I would be concerned that anyone elected governor who was with the one hand sort of embracing America and then the other hand rejecting democracy responsible for running elections. I think that would be a concern.

TAPPER: All right, Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt. I have questions about the Phillies bullpen, but I can do those during the commercial break. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for your testimony, for your bravery, and your wife over there too, because I know it's not just you. It's the whole family that had to get through this.

Coming up, we're going to talk to another one of today's witnesses, Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg, as we break down all the new testimony and the legal implications for former President Trump.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)