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Today's Hearing to Focus on Linking Extremist, Trump Associates; U.S Officials Working on Plan for Second Booster for All Adults; 500-Plus Firefighters Race to Save Famed Yosemite Sequoia Trees. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired July 12, 2022 - 10:00   ET

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

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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Less than three hours from now, the January 6 select committee turns its focus to how right-wing extremist groups, including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, prepare to attack the U.S. Capitol in the days leading up to the deadly insurrection and crucially the group's ties to former President Trump's inner circle. The committee is expected to show how Trump's actions fueled those groups, such as his December 2020 tweet telling his supporters to descend on Washington on January 6 claiming it will be wild, one committee member calling that tweet a clarion call to violent extremists.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: So, this panel today is also expected to play clips from former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone's closed door interview that happened on Friday. Cipollone was at a critical White House meeting the day before Trump posted that tweet where the former president welcomed a group of his most extreme election-denying allies. Sources tell CNN the meeting broke out at one point into screaming, chaos, at certain points, as some Trump aides pushed back on some of the most outrageous suggestions about overturning the election.

SCIUTTO: Let's begin this morning with CNN's Manu Raju on Capitol Hill. So, tell us what their plans are today and how they're going to back up these allegations.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they are promising new evidence that will show the methodical planning that was under way by these right-wing extremists groups, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, as well as communication that occurred between some Trump associates and some of these groups. And we heard from this committee that Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, the Trump associate, and also Flynn, the former national security adviser at the Trump White House, both will be singled out as part of this hearing.

Now, in addition to that, a big focus will be on a December 18th meeting that occurred in the White House where there were a number of discussions under way about how to overturn the elections, December 18, 2020, several weeks after Joe Biden won, talking about seizing of voting machines, potentially naming a special counsel, all of which we expect to hear from the committee more details about. Also we expect to hear video deposition from Pat Cipollone, the Trump White House counsel, who was questioned extensively about that mid- December meeting. Now, after that mid-December meeting, there was a tweet that came out from Donald Trump that essentially urged his supporters to come to Washington. The committee plans to show how that tweet led to the planning of these extremist groups that eventually led to all the death and destruction that occurred in the Capitol on January 6.

But there will be some live witness testimony too. One is a former Oath Keeper spokesperson, a self-described propagandist, as well as an Ohio man who breached the Capitol, a rioter coming to this building. There could be additional surprises, too, guys. They are saying that they are not going to disclose all the identities of these witnesses out of fear of security concerns, concerns about potential witness tampering and intimidation and the like. But new evidence promised in this committee's hearing which will be the only one of this week. Guys?

HARLOW: Right, a big change from yesterday. Manu, thanks very much.

SCIUTTO: All right. Joining us now to discuss, Elliot Williams, former deputy assistant attorney general, and Norm Eisen, he was special counsel for the House Judiciary and Trump's first of two impeachment trials. Good to have you both on?

Elliot, the essential allegation here from the committee seems to be incitement, that the president incited the rioters that day. When you hear that phrase, clarion call, looking at this December 2020 tweet from the former president, big protest in D.C. on January 6, be there, will be wild. What is the legal standard to establish criminal culpability for incitement?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, that's the thing. There's a pretty high legal standard for establishing criminal culpability because you're going to have to know that the individual intended to cause the violence or intended to cause the underlying crime that follows.

Now, look, what the committee, I think, is trying to prove today and establish in this December 18th meeting is either did President Trump or intermediaries, other people who weren't necessarily the president, made aware of the violence, and then did the president seek to have it carried out?

But the whole -- we hear the word conspiracy a lot, and the whole point in proving a conspiracy is, number one, not every person needs to be equally guilty, and, number two, not every person needs to have communicated directly. So, I'm looking for intermediaries, other people, what they heard, what they knew, and what they passed on and what got up to the president or his closest allies.

HARLOW: So, Norm, building on that great question that Jim asked about incitement, like what's the legal bar, I also wonder is it just about the start of something, right, inciting something to begin or a lack of action in the 187 minutes between when it began and when the president actually put that tape recorded video out? Can lack of action also be used in an incitement case?

NORM EISEN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It can be, and that point, the start of something, is so, so critical here.

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Because, remember, a federal judge has already found that Trump likely committed crimes, including conspiracy to defraud the United States. And what we're hearing, that's an easier crime to prove than incitement. And what we're hearing today is another phase of that, the story the committee has told is that he was desperate after the Electoral College. We're going today to hear about this meeting in the White House, the signal that followed on December 19th to the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, the will be wild tweet, and how that culminated in the violence. So, it's part of a calculated attack that started, we've heard, from the committee and other places and culminates in the violence.

SCIUTTO: Elliot Williams, you worked in the Justice Department. New York Times reporting that Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony a couple weeks ago surprised the DOJ, and it exposed that they had not quite, in their investigation at least, parallel investigation, penetrated Trump's inner circle in terms of his activities in the days leading up and on that day, January 6.

I mean, my first question is, are you surprised by that? But how far does that set back the DOJ investigation if they're just beginning down that path?

WILLIAMS: It's hard to say, Jim. Look, I worked at the Justice Department for a long time, I was a prosecutor and ultimately deputy assistant attorney general. Nobody knows truly, for certain, what is happening within the Justice Department because much of what happens in criminal investigations happens in secret. The work of grand juries happens in secret. By law, investigations happen in secret, so we really don't know. Now, that's not to dispute or call into questions anything that the great reporters of The New York Times are finding but we just simply don't know.

Now, if the Justice Department is truly only finding about Cassidy Hutchinson for the first time, that's obviously quite troubling given that, frankly, you and I, Jim, on this program have been throwing around and discussing her for months. But I just have a very hard time believing that this all was coming so out of the blue.

So, I think all should pause regard the Justice Department and Congress, two different bodies that do different things with different degrees of public exposure of the work they do and just wait and see what comes.

HARLOW: Norm, a lot of focus today we're hearing is going to be on the December 18, 2020 White House meeting where then-attorney Sidney Powell was, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a lot of the biggest pushers of conspiracy theories and election deniers were there. There was talk of like seizing voting machines, et cetera, and Pat Cipollone was there, the former White House counsel. And we know he was asked about it behind closed doors on Friday.

What are you looking for most in these clips that the committee will play today in that questioning about what happened in that meeting and how it would tie to an incitement potential charge?

EISEN: Any prosecution of Trump, and we mustn't forget that a state prosecutor is very advanced, the D.A. in Atlanta, whatever may be going on at DOJ. Any prosecutor who is looking at this conspiracy is going to want to prove that Trump knew he had lost the election, he knew he had no basis to pursue it. So, Cipollone, I expect, we'll see tape from Cipollone today that will say that he made clear for the umpteenth time that these were crazy theories, no, you can't seize these voting machines.

Indeed, this group that came in sometimes referred to as team crazy, I think the committee has done a pretty good job so far showing Trump knew better, and we're going to hear more about that today.

SCIUTTO: Elliot Williams, Norm Eisen, great to have you both on.

HARLOW: Thank you.

WILLIAMS: Thanks, guys.

SCIUTTO: Let's speak now to Daryl Johnson, he's a former senior domestic terrorism analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, and author of Hate Land, a Long, Hard Look at America's Extremist Heart. Daryl, good to have you on.

As you know, like yourself, the FBI and the DHS, they identify these groups as the country's primary domestic terrorism threat today, greatest terror threat, in fact, greater than that emanating from international terror groups. Just for framing here should folks look at the events leading up to January 6th and that day and the involvement of these groups as a domestic terror attack?

DARYL JOHNSON, FORMER SENIOR DOMESTIC TERRORISM ANALYST, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: Yes. So, what we witnessed on January 6th last year, I call an insurrection. But within this insurrection, there were many different moving parts and participants. We had people that placed pipe bombs at the Democratic and Republican offices. That is an act of terrorism. We had other individuals that stormed the Capitol and destroyed property, that's more of an insurrection.

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So, this terror threat that we've seen, this right-wing terror threat, has evolved over the past ten years and does pose the greatest national security threat that we have today.

SCIUTTO: I've often wondered because I've covered January 6 but I have covered for years terrorism emanating from other groups overseas and I wondered what the reaction would be in this country if a sitting president echoed some of the propaganda and the hate behind international terror groups, what would the reaction be? Can we, from your perspective, from a national security perspective, compare the former president's repeated calls, not just that December 20th tweet but other calls, the equivalent to some degree, in your view, of an American goading international terror groups to attack?

JOHNSON: I wouldn't go that far but the president, former President Trump, definitely played into these extremist narratives and fanned the flames, so to speak, to get these people to react. This is the first time as an intelligence analyst studying this phenomenon for almost 25 years for the government and almost 30 to 40 years as an individual where I saw that these right-wing extremist groups thrive under a Republican administration.

Typically, these groups are less motivated to act and to recruit and radicalize under Republican administrations because they don't have to fear gun legislation being passed or minority rights being expanded or immigration policies being lax. These types of things agitate these groups and typically under Democratic administrations, we see a rise in activity.

So, this is the first time under a Republican administration that I saw a continued rise in increase in the right-wing extremist threat.

SCIUTTO: On the good side from a law enforcement perspective, these hundreds of prosecutions and indictments and convictions of those involved have given authorities vision into these groups, how they organize and how extensive they are. On the flipside, these groups are not necessarily cowed. We have seen them marching through Boston, Philadelphia, more than two dozen men arrested near a pride event in Idaho recently. I wonder, are these groups stronger or weaker today than they were prior to January 6th?

JOHNSON: So, just like we saw in the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, many of these groups have now gone underground and it makes it more difficult for law enforcement to monitor them and to detect and deter threats. So, on the one hand the 800-plus arrests that we've had in connection with the Capitol insurrection last year did kind of send a chilling effect on these right-wing extremist groups and kind of put them on notice that the government is going to pursue justice in these matters. However, the sentencing, in my opinion, to-date, has been fairly light. And so it almost gives a green light to these groups that, hey, it's okay, we'll tolerate a certain level of violence and activity by you guys because you are not be going to prison for a long time.

SCIUTTO: And to your point out, do they wait for a more welcoming leadership at some point, or is that their view?

Daryl Johnson, I appreciate having you on this morning.

JOHNSON: Thank you.

HARLOW: Still to come, new COVID cases are rising, as you have likely noticed, across the United States. This is being fueled by a highly transmissible subvariant. What the White House is doing to fight the new surge.

Ahead also, fighting to save Yosemite's legendary giant sequoias, why the fire is proving extremely difficult to contain.

SCIUTTO: And wait for it. Just minutes from now, NASA will release new images from the remarkable James Webb Telescope looking billions of years back in time, many billions of miles away, giving us perhaps our best view of the universe ever. That's coming up. You're going to want to see it.

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HARLOW: So, this morning, U.S. health officials are working on a plan to allow a second COVID-19 vaccine booster shot for all adults, not just those over 50. A senior White House official tells CNN the FDA is making it a high priority as omicron subvariants fuel a new increase in cases. The CDC is now reporting these subvariants make up more than 70 percent of COVID cases.

Let's discuss all of this with Emergency Physician and CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen. It's good to have you here, Dr. Wen.

So, we are talking BA.4 and 5. And I think the control room can tell me if we have this sound from Dr. Fauci just a few minutes ago, I want to play it and then have you respond to what he said about these new subvariants. Here he was.

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DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: It substantially evades neutralizing antibodies induced in people by vaccination and infection. But the vaccine effectiveness against severe disease, fortunately for us, is not reduced substantially or at all compared to other omicron subvariants.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Am I correct? What I'm hearing him say is even if you are vaccinated, boosted, you may be a little more likely to get these subvariants than others, but you're still -- than you were previously, you're more protected overall with the vaccine, but still a vaccine is as effective in terms of preventing you from getting really sick.

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DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Right, Poppy. I think that is the key takeaway. Yes. It's possible that even if you're vaccinated and boosted and even if you recently had COVID, you could still contract BA.4, BA.5, these extremely contagious omicron subvariants. At the same time though, the key is that those of us who are vaccinated and boosted, we are very well protected against severe illness.

And I think we need to reset the expectation that that was the entire goal of vaccination, that vaccines were never meant to prevent all milder, asymptomatic illness. That would be great if they did but they don't. But what they were supposed to do is to prevent us from becoming severely ill and to keep us from overwhelming hospitals. And, in fact, that's what we're seeing even though we're seeing a rise in cases. We know the actual number is probably far more than what's actually reported. But our hospitals are not getting overwhelmed. They are only one-fifth of where they were at the peak of the omicron surge back in December and January, and so vaccines still work very well against severe illness.

HARLOW: Okay. So, the White House, we know, is looking right now at whether adults of any age, not just those over 50, should get a second booster. That would be four shots for those getting Pfizer and Moderna. Dr. Jha at the White House just said they are going to leave that decision up to agencies. What do you think? Is it important for healthy adults under 50 to also get a second booster?

WEN: I think it's reasonable for the FDA and CDC to give what's called a permissive recommendation, to say that if that's something you want to do, you should be able to do it. Because I know that I have patients, I have colleagues who are very anxious, who may be under 50 but may have chronic medical illnesses or may have gotten got one dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine and then a second dose of Moderna and Pfizer, but that was back in October. And so they are now nine months out of getting their last shot and maybe they want an additional booster.

But I think there are a lot of other people who, if they are generally healthy, they're vaccinated and boosted once, they are well protected against severe illness and probably don't need to rush out especially if they also recently had COVID and, in a sense, got their second booster.

HARLOW: But I guess I'm wondering, does a second booster or a fourth shot protect you more than just one booster?

WEN: That second booster definitely protects you if you are 60 and older or if you are 50 and older with chronic medical conditions, including against severe illness. But if you're under 50, it's unclear that it's going to give you additional protection against severe disease. It probably gives you additional protection against symptomatic illness but I think there are a lot of people out there who are saying, it doesn't matter so much if I get symptomatic illness. That's not what I care about the most right now.

HARLOW: Okay. Dr. Leana Wen, thanks.

SCIUTTO: Coming up, a wildfire is threatening one of Yosemite National Park's most precious landmarks, firefighters struggling to gain the upper hand for those giant sequoias in danger. We're going to be live from Yosemite, next.

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[10:25:00]

SCIUTTO: So, some potential good news here. Fire crews in California's Yosemite National Park say they are gaining some ground in the fight to protect the park's more than 500 giant sequoia trees as the wildfire continues to spread in that area.

HARLOW: At the moment, the fire is only 22 percent contained with more than 2,700 acres of land burned so far.

But the big concern this morning is weather with temperatures expected to rise, to increase about 30 degrees from where they've been by this evening.

Nick Watt is on scene for us again this morning in Yosemite. Nick, how are firefighters trying to get ahead of this and protect those sequoias especially?

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Poppy, the real key here is how many firefighters. There are 545 of them on the ground. There isn't much fire activity in the rest of California, so they have flooded this zone, digging trenches, back burning. So, that means they are burning fuel in front of the fire so that when the fire gets there, there is no fuel for it to continue. They are also attacking it from the air.

Right now, it is slow moving fire creating intense heat. How intense? Well, over the weekend it was so hot that one branch got lifted so high in the updraft that when it came back down to Earth, it narrowly missed two aircrafts that were involved in fighting the fire.

So, past 24 hours or so, the fire has been moving a little bit east. That is good news when we're talking about the sequoias because that is not the direction of Mariposa Grove where those sequoias are. The issue is the temperature and just how dry it is. Nearing 70 degrees now, probably going to get near 100 by this afternoon. And the moisture, the humidity in the air is very, very low. So, that means this fire burns and burns very, very hot.

But the headline here, the firefighters say they are right now in a very good place. They are confident that they are going to save those trees. Guys?

SCIUTTO: It's a relief.

HARLOW: Great news. Our thanks to all of them. Thanks, Nick Watt, very much to you and your team on the ground.

So, the excitement is building. Seconds from now, NASA will reveal pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope, a project that could help scientists solve the mysteries of the universe.

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You will see it all unfold live right here next.