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January 6th Committee Receives Secret Service Text; Fake Electors Targets in Criminal Probe; John Danforth is Interviewed about Trump's 2020 Election Claims; Biden Preparing Action on Climate; Benjamin Zaitchik is Interviewed about Climate Change. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired July 20, 2022 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto. Welcome to Washington.

HARLOW: Good to be here.

SCIUTTO: Major developments overnight in the January 6th investigation. According to a letter obtained by CNN, the Secret Service has provided just one, a single text message exchange, to the DHS inspector general following a request from a month's worth of records. The department says it has not been able to recover messages from around the time of the January 6th insurrection after claiming they were purged during a phone migration.

HARLOW: Also new this morning, surrounding -- new details surrounding former President Trump's efforts to overturn the election. A Georgia district attorney tells 16 so-called fake electors they are now targets of this ongoing criminal investigation in Fulton County, Georgia. It is a notable escalation. We'll explain why.

And it comes as another election denier has just secured the Republican primary for governor in Maryland. Trump-backed candidate Dan Cox, known for stoking election fraud fears and actually encouraging former President Trump to seize voting machines will face off against the Democratic nominee there in November.

But let's begin with the single text exchange that the Secret Service has provided to the January 6th committee.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Our justice correspondent Jessica Schneider is with us.

Just one back and forth. That's it?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: That's it. And the committee members here continue to be dissatisfied with the Secret Service response.

So, what we learned from this letter overnight, it was obtained by our Jamie Gangel, is that the inspector general actually requested a month's worth of text messages from December 7th to January 8th, 2021. He requested it from 24 Secret Service employees. We don't know which ones. But the inspector general is saying he never got any text messages.

What the committee is now saying is they have gotten one. But it's only one. And it's this text message between the Capitol Police chief at the time, to the chief of the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service, requesting assistance on January 6th. But that's it. Secret Service says, in fact, that they're unaware of any other text messages from that time period.

And they're saying this in part because of two reasons. They say that, yes, data, in fact, was lost during this phone migration when they changed their phones, and they're also saying it was up to the individual employees to back up their phones. And presumably if they didn't do that, that's why there isn't this data.

But the Secret Service is pledging here to continue looking for this. So they issued -- this is part of the letter that was obtained by Jamie Gangel last night, saying the Secret Service continues to engage in extensive efforts to further assess whether any relevant text messages sent or received by 24 individuals identified by the DHS, OIG were lost due to the Intune migration and, if so, whether such texts are recoverable. The letter continued to say, these efforts include the polling of any available meta data to determine what, if any, texts were sent or received on the devices of identified individuals.

So, the Secret Service says, look, we're continuing to look here. And they - they point out, they've already handed over thousands of documents. They have handed over emails, some messages from the Microsoft Teams chat that they had. But as I mentioned, committee members aren't satisfied.

We heard from Zoe Lofgren last night. Here's what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ZOE LOFGREN (D-CA): We got one text message. And I haven't seen it yet. It's going to be sent over to me.

It's -- obviously, this doesn't look good. And so, you know, coincidences can happen, but, you know, we really need to get to the bottom of this.

January 16th, they were told to preserve everything. And within a week or two they allowed it to be destroyed. So, that's very problematic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHNEIDER: And that point from Zoe Lofgren is really key there, is that Congress had notified Secret Service about 11 days before this migration started. Secret Service had previously said the inspector general hadn't asked until the migration had already begun. And that might be true. But now we know that Congress asked for it before.

So, the question is, what happened there? Why wasn't there a more diligent effort to save these messages?

SCIUTTO: And this frequently happens with investigations where you have notices go out, preserve all records because we're going to be asking for them.

SCHNEIDER: Yes. Exactly. That's what happened here.

SCIUTTO: Jessica Schneider, thanks so much.

HARLOW: Thanks, Jess.

SCIUTTO: All right, in the state of Georgia, all 16 fake, and they were fake, Trump electors who signed a bogus document to subvert the election in 2020 are now targets of an ongoing criminal investigation there.

[09:05:01]

This is according to documents from the Fulton County District Attorney's Office in Atlanta.

HARLOW: Our correspondent Nick Valencia joins us with more.

This is - this is a really big change, Nick, because in Fani Willis' initial investigation, they were always told they were witnesses, right, and they had come to them for information. To make them targets and send these letters really changes things, does it not?

SCIUTTO: Yes.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's a significant development in this investigation and it shows that Georgia prosecutors are moving closer to potential criminal charges.

An attorney for many of the electors says that they were cooperating with the DA's investigation. Some of them were cooperating as witnesses, not as targets. But that seems to have changed according to court filings when attorneys with Willis' office say that new evidence came to light which led to these new developments.

Now, 11 of the 16 electors are pushing back, filing a motion to quash this. One attorney saying that this is a publicity stunt, that some of these electors agreed to participate in Willis' investigation in good faith. That, though, has changed.

And Willis has, up until now, and to this point, really not shown any indication that she believed that these fake electors did anything criminal when they participated in a plan to subvert the Electoral College and to try to certify former President Trump as the rightful winner of the state of Georgia when he was not.

Willis has also been very close to the vest here with these details. In fact, news of these potential criminal charges was buried in the response of a motion filed by the attorney of one of these fake electors to get Willis thrown off the case. Her investigation so far, guys, has been very broad, very wide reaching, and this new development shows just how wide reaching it is.

And we should remind our viewers that this news comes on the heels of seven key Trump allies being issued subpoenas. That includes his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and the Republican senator in South Carolina, Lindsey Graham.

Poppy. Jim.

SCIUTTO: Nick Valencia, thanks so much.

VALENCIA: You bet.

SCIUTTO: Joining us now to discuss, John Danforth, former Republican senator from Missouri. He also served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. He's now leading a super PAC that is supporting an independent Senate candidate in Missouri.

Senator, thanks for joining us this morning.

JOHN DANFORTH, FORMER U.S. SENATOR: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: So we're more than a year and a half out from the 2020 election efforts to overturn it. And a local affiliate in Milwaukee, WISN, is reporting that former President Trump called the Wisconsin state assembly speaker, Republican Robin Voss, last week in another push, pressure campaign, to decertify that state's 2020 presidential election results.

As you watch this, I wonder, has the legal system effectively penalized the former president for his failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election if he's still trying to do so in a major state, such as Wisconsin?

DANFORTH: I don't think it's possible to overstate the seriousness of what has happened. Not just on January 6th, but before that, when the president started saying the only way he could lose is the election -- if the election is rigged. He has been on a real campaign against the whole constitutional order. And what's sad about it is 30 percent of the American people believe it.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DANFORTH: They believe that the election was rigged. They believe that President Biden is an illegitimate president. They believe that the court system, which decided 60 plus cases, doesn't mean anything. And when you feel that way, what's the next step? Well, the next step is January 6th. The next step is taking it to -- taking the law into your own hands.

So, this is a very, very dangerous thing for our country and it's part of the reason for the extreme divisiveness, which is so destructive to America now.

SCIUTTO: You've been doing your part. You were part of a group that released -- that went through each of these false election claims, debunked them. A group of Republicans, prominent Republicans, called them out. And yet, as you know, sitting Republicans, current lawmakers who stick their necks out here, Liz Cheney among them, get punished by the party, right, shunned. I mean the current House minority leader pushed Liz Cheney out for joining the January 6th committee.

Is your party, the Republican Party, responsible, partly responsible for allowing this election lie to live on?

DANFORTH: Yes, it is. I mean not - obviously not all of the party. I certainly admire Congresswoman Cheney and Congressman Kinzinger and others. But insofar as members of the Republican Party take the position that American democracy doesn't work, I mean, that's really a serious charge.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DANFORTH: And when people believe that, that is a really - a great weakening of America.

[09:10:07]

So, when we wrote the report, it was important to come to grips with reality. And it was important to say, here is the truth. And that report was written by eight Republicans, three of whom are retired federal judges, one a retired solicitor general of the United States. So it was a - it was a very solid group of people, and we looked at every case, and in every charge of fraud, and there is no evidence that there is sufficient fraud to overturn the results of a single precinct, much less the whole election.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DANFORTH: And the importance of putting that truth out there is to combat this exceptionally corrosive view that American democracy doesn't work.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DANFORTH: I mean, as Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, government depends on the consent of the governed. Well, if 30 percent of the people don't believe that the government is legitimate, that - that -- those 30 percent are not giving their consent to the governed (ph).

So, it's really a - it's a sad case, really. And I don't know if you follow the situation out here in Missouri, but we've got a Senate race and we've got one candidate who is toting a gun and saying that it should be open hunting season on people who disagree with them.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DANFORTH: Two other candidates separately cradling AR-15s. Another candidate with a blow torch saying he wants to go to Washington with a blow torch.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DANFORTH: Another candidate saying that he's a human hand grenade, pull the pin and roll him out on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DANFORTH: So this is - it's just crazy. It's not politics as it is -- as far as I know ever been practiced before. That is the reason for our independent candidacy of John Wood running for the Senate. It's a way of saying to both political parties, look, let's get a grip on yourselves, and let's try to hold the country together.

SCIUTTO: As you know, an election denier just won the Republican primary in Maryland, right, a state that borders the U.S. capital city of Washington, D.C. And in that race, and it's not the only one, Democrats supported him, you know, through some resources that -- making a political calculation that he will be a weaker candidate in the general election.

Are Democrats, in your view, by doing that worsening the divide and, frankly, playing with fire?

DANFORTH: I think it's - it's, you know, it's trickster stuff. It's cynical. It's - it's what happened in our state back whenever it was, ten years ago, when Claire McCaskill essentially engineered the nomination of Todd Akin, who was not electable.

So, it's -- you know what I think? I think that we're all in this together. I mean this is - I mean it sort of may be simpler if it were just a problem within the Republican Party. But, no, I mean, all of this sense of us against them, and grievances, and various groups being taken advantage of, and so on and so forth, the whole tone of politics today is division. It's divisiveness. It's us against them. And it's not just affecting politics, it's turning families against each other.

I know of a woman who hasn't talked -- her father hasn't spoken to her for two years because of politics. I mean it's just - it's just wrong.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DANFORTH: And the purpose of the John Wood campaign is to say, OK, let's get over this. I mean, let's try to hold ourselves together. Let's be the United States and all of this division that's being stoked up because it's viewed by candidates in both parties as being to their political advantage to just rev up all of the fear and all of the anxiety. And it's -- this is not good for America.

SCIUTTO: Well, listen, appreciate the work you're doing. I'm certainly aware of families split over this kind of thing as well, as I'm sure a lot of folks watching right now.

Senator John Danforth, thanks so much for joining us this morning.

DANFORTH: Thank you.

HARLOW: It's a reality in so many American households.

SCIUTTO: It is. HARLOW: Coming up, the CEO of Goldman Sachs sits down with us, talks about the chances of a recession. Does he think we've hit peak inflation yet, and recommendations for the Biden administration on this economy. Our interview with David Solomon is ahead.

SCIUTTO: Plus, in a matter of hours, President Biden will outline new efforts to combat the climate crisis as a dangerous heat wave covers most of the country.

[09:15:03]

Europe as well. Should the president declare a national climate emergency? It's on the table.

And the fate of Uvalde school police chief, Pete Arredondo, is hanging in the balance after grieving parents demand, once again, he be fired. We're going to be live coming up.

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SCIUTTO: Once again today, much of the world will be hit with scorching temperatures. Yet more evidence of the climate crisis. It's a science. It's in the data. Here in the U.S., the heat wave that's been smothering the West and South will now hit the Northeast. New York, Philadelphia, Boston expecting highs in the 90s with the heat index where it will feel like around 100 degrees.

HARLOW: In Texas, several cities hit highs over 100 degrees yesterday. The heat raising the risk of significant wildfires, leading to 99 percent of that state to experience some level of drought.

In Arizona, outages have left thousands without power. Temperatures there soaring also into the triple digits.

[09:20:01]

All of this is happening as the backdrop to President Biden traveling to Massachusetts in just a few hours to outline whatever steps this administration can take, executive action-wise, on climate change.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Jeremy Diamond is at the White House with more.

I mean, reading what the White House is previewing here, they want to do a lot, but there is actually only so much executive action can actually accomplish on climate.

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, no doubt about it. The White House was disappointed to see former -- current Senator Joe Manchin, last week, announcing that he would not support additional climate provisions in this Democratic reconciliation bill, but they are trying to take some action. And today we expect President Biden, as he visits this former coal powered power plant that has been converted into a manufacturing facility for components of wind turbines, the president is expected to announce additional executive actions tackling two key areas. The first of which directly related to that now wind manufacturing facility, aiming to take additional actions to boost domestic offshore wind industry. And then, secondly, taking actions to address the issue that 100 million Americans are currently confronting, who are under heat warnings or heat advisories. This is going to take additional steps to protect those communities facing extreme heat.

And here is why the president's climate adviser says he's acting now.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GINA MCCARTHY, WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL CLIMATE ADVISER: The president is no longer sitting around waiting for that. This is his time to act. And he's going to take that time. So this is all about him making the case, not just to shift away from the fossil fuels of the past, but to look at the opportunities across the country that are growing, and how do we accelerate that moving forward?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DIAMOND: And Gina McCarthy was also asked by our colleague Kaitlan Collins whether or not the president intends to sign a national climate emergency. She did not directly answer, but she made clear that that could - that is still on the table, and that President Biden does intend to take additional executive actions going forward.

But as you said, Poppy, a lot of this will be short of what could have happened through legislation. That legislation now not expected to happen.

Poppy. Jim.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: After a lot, a lot of anticipation.

Jeremy Diamond, at the White House, thanks so much.

Want to discuss now with Professor Benjamin Zaitchik. His research at Johns Hopkins University centers on understanding, managing and coping with changes in climate. He is the co-author of a new study that focuses on the increasing risks the world faces from global warming and how such dangers can cascade.

Professor, good to have you here.

BENJAMIN ZAITCHIK, PROFESSOR OF EARTH AND PLANETARY SCIENCES, JOHN HOPKINS UNIVERSITY: Thanks for having me.

SCIUTTO: Folks see the heat waves in Europe. They see them here in the U.S. They're feeling them. Explain in the simplest terms, briefly if you can, how these heat waves are the result of a warming planet.

ZAITCHIK: Yes, absolutely. So, first of all, of course, as the entire planet warms up, we expect temperatures to rise. And this is entirely consistent with what we've seen for years now, these rising global temperatures.

But, on top of that, we're seeing an increase in heat waves in places like Europe and parts of the United States that we think is due to something about climate change, which is that the arctic forms faster than the tropics. And what it ends up doing is it means that the whole global wind pattern relaxes a little bit. And that's allowing these meanders in the wind pattern up high in the atmosphere in what we call the jet stream. And what we're seeing now in both the United States and Europe is partly a response to that. As this jet stream kind of gets lazy and meanders a bit more, it can stick around with these patterns that block air flow or sometimes bring air flow in from the south, and we're seeing that in the condition of the extreme temperatures.

SCIUTTO: That's a great description. Helps me, right? It's sort of like the world needs a breeze and it can't get a breeze.

Our climate correspondent Bill Weir will often make the point when he describes this that if you went back ten years, that what's happening now in terms of droughts and heat waves like this would have been in the worst end of the predictions, right, in terms of the forecast. That in a way it's even worse than some of the folks who were ringing the alarm, sounding the alarm, had expected.

So, if we, as a planet, do nothing sufficient now to mitigate climate change, what does your study find happens next?

ZAITCHIK: Well, we see an increase in these kinds of events. They become more frequent, more severe, and we see events that we've never seen before.

You know, there's a tendency for us to talk about this kind of heat and say, oh, it's the new normal. Unfortunately, it's not the new normal. It's what we'll be nostalgic for in a few years if we continue the way that we are moving the world's climate right now.

SCIUTTO: Goodness. Well, as you know, the U.S. made commitments in Scotland last year. The U.S. is the second biggest emitter of climate changing emissions. Made commitments in Scotland. Now Congress has failed to pass legislation that would help meet those commitments and also the Supreme Court has limited the EPA's ability to regulate emissions. Can the U.S. meet its climate commitments right now given those developments?

[09:25:07]

ZAITCHIK: Well, I think we're all concerned about those developments. Unlike the vast majority of Americans who would like to see our government step up and rise to this challenge with more action, and there are various mechanisms with which that can happen. The administration, as we just heard, is going to do what it can through executive action. And I think we need the government, but we also need all elements of our society, all hands on deck on this one. So, there's a lot that still can be done at local and state levels. There's a lot that companies can do, that individuals can do, and it's a shared global challenge and we need a shared global response.

SCIUTTO: People often -- people in your business, in your science, often say the window is closing, right? That if we as a people, as a nation, as a world, frankly, planet, aren't taking to action right now, that we then lose the opportunity to take any action, you know, that could make a difference. How tight is that window?

ZAITCHIK: So, I wouldn't describe it -- I know that people use that analogy. It's useful to visualize. But it's not like the window is going to close. This is a continuum. And so we're seeing really right now is that as the climate warms, we get into some stiffer headwinds. Some of this feedback (INAUDIBLE) making it even harder to act.

But I don't want to talk about like a window closing because then once the window's closed there's nothing you can do.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ZAITCHIK: In fact, everything we do will combat against the worst outcomes. And so we can't act like the window's closed. We need to do everything we can to keep moving forward.

SCIUTTO: Before we go, what's the most positive development you've seen happen in this space? Is there something out here -- out there folks can look to and say, well, that's good news. Someone's making the difference.

ZAITCHIK: The most positive development I would say is how much attention is being paid right now. As much as heat waves like this are a terrible tragedy for those who are affected by them, they are really focusing the world's attention. And that's what we need. If we can pull our collective energies, our collective will, to focus on this problem, like we never have before, I think there is a lot that we can accomplish. Maybe we could accomplish things that aren't currently in the scope of what we discussed before.

SCIUTTO: Professor, I hope you're right. Professor Benjamin Zaitchik, thanks for walking us through it all.

ZAITCHIK: Thanks so much.

HARLOW: Some things to be optimistic about.

All right, well, small business owners, thousands of them, in Washington today urging Congress, the White House, to pass policies that will help them stay competitive in the face of record inflation. The CEO of Goldman Sachs attending their summit with small business owners. I sat down with him and one of those businesswomen on the economy ahead.

We are also moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street where stock index futures are a little mixed there after bouncing back yesterday. Investors awaiting more key earnings reports.

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