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Jan. 6 Committee Subpoenas Former President; WAPO: Docs Seized At Mar-A-Lago Had Secrets On China, Iran. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired October 21, 2022 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: Thanks for joining us at the top of the hour here, I'm Erica Hill. Welcome to CNN NEWSROOM.

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

The Breaking News. The January 6 committee just subpoenaed Donald Trump. This historic move stems from their investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol. CNN received a copy of the panel's letter and subpoena moments ago. The Committee voted unanimously to compel Trump to testify under oath and provide documents about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

HILL: Now, if the former president fights the subpoena, that court battle could outlast the committee's mandate. CNN's justice correspondent, Evan Perez, and CNN political correspondent Sara Murray joining us now. So, Evan, first of all, what's the committee saying here?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Erica and Victor, the subpoena is demanding that the former president produce documents by November 4, this is everything related to his effort to overturn the 2020 election results. They're asking also for him to appear for a deposition on November 14, and to provide testimony to the committee. That could go beyond just that single day, according to the committee. And then in addition to that, they sent a letter to the former president explaining what they have found in as part of their investigation, and why they'd taken this extraordinary step.

I'll read you just a part of that letter signed by Bennie Thompson and the committee -- who is the chairman of the committee. He says, in part. As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multipart effort to overturn the 2020 election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power.

They point out, Victor and Erica, that former presidents have, of course, throughout history have appeared and provided testimony to Congress, despite the fact obviously, that there is -- this is a highly unusual move. They point out and they say, in short, you are at the center of the first and only effort by any U.S. president to overturn an election and to obstruct a peaceful transition of power, ultimately culminating in a -- in a bloody attack on our Capitol and on the Congress itself. They point -- they point to a number of findings that the committee has found as part of its months-long investigation, including from testimony, former administration officials, people inside the White House, and this is what they say.

They accused the former president of purposely and maliciously disseminating false allegations of fraud related to the 2020 election attempting to corrupt the Justice Department, including by soliciting and enlisting Department officials to make false statements, and again, also pressuring state officials and legislators. Of course, we have seen video and we've heard audio of the former president telling officials in Georgia that he wanted them to find exactly the number of votes that would have been delivered to him in that state, which of course, Joe Biden won and of course, would have helped them remain in power, Erica and Victor.

BLACKWELL: All right, let's go to Sara now. Sara, the committee lays out some dates and deadlines here. Just explained more of what they're asking for and by when.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right. So you know, they lay out this November 4 deadline for these documents and they're asking for a pretty wide array of documents and communications. You know, one of the things that's notable, I think, from this list is they're asking, for instance, for records of Trump -- of calls, Trump made or also calls that people made on his behalf because we know that Trump has sort of this habit of telling aides, you know, get this person on the phone, get this person to talk to me. So they're looking for any calls that were on January 6. They're looking for any records of communications with members of Congress during a certain window of time.

You know, they're looking for any documents that are related to the Proud Boys the Oath Keepers, other militia groups. They're looking to communications that involve state officials or state lawmakers so, getting to what Evan was just talking about, efforts to kind of pressure them not to certify the election results. They're also looking for any of these communications involving Mike Pence.

Obviously, we know in the run-up to January 6 that Trump's view of Mike Pence is very much soured and their relationship very much soured. They're looking for any communications about the committee's investigation and witnesses.

And lastly, they're looking for anything that would involve the destruction of materials, any record of the destruction of documents, which was interesting. So this is a very broad subpoena in terms of what the committee is seeking and a relatively tight deadline in order to produce all of these communications but, you know, as Evan was saying, they sort of run through all the ways that they think Donald Trump was an active participant in this act of blocking the peaceful transition of power or attempting to.

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BLACKWELL: Yes, active and inactive, and some important points as well.

MURRAY: Yes.

BLACKWELL: Sara, Evans, stay with us. Let's bring in now CNN's senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig, CNN's chief political analyst, Gloria Borger. Elie, let me start with you. And there are 10 bullet points that they lay out here, the president's action and as I said, inaction, in the subpoena, summoning tens of thousands of supporters in Washington and knowing they were angry, and some were armed, sending them to the Capitol, they go on. Your view of how they lay out the case as they send the subpoena.

ELIE HONIG, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST; Well, Victor, this is an accusatory subpoena, to be clear. It actually reads quite like a prosecutorial closing argument. They use those bullet points, to sum up, the arguments that they've been making -- the committee has been making over the past several months through the hearings. They basically get to the bottom line of this was all about you, people acted on your behalf, you lied to the American public, you lied to the courts, you spurred this on.

One interesting detail that I noted in this letter, the committee actually goes a bit farther than they did even in the hearings. They say that while the January 6 attack was happening, when Donald Trump sent his infamous tweet at 2:24 p.m. attacking Vice President Mike Pence verbally, the committee says you incited violence with that tweet. That's more than doing nothing. So this is an accusatory subpoena. They're trying to establish the record. And, Victor, I think it's a preview of what we will see in the ultimate report that will come out of the committee.

HILL: And, Elie, just stay with me for one minute too. What -- you know, you call it as accusatory, it is very detailed, as we've been going through, is also -- is it also this detailed in your view because part of that is an attempt to blunt whatever may be coming at them in terms of a legal retort from Donald Trump's team?

HONIG: Absolutely. There's an anticipatory angle to this, Erica. I think they understand Trump is going to try to deny this, deflect, and so they do put a lot of detail in here. They cite two specific conversations he had. They cite two specific pieces of witness testimony. The committee lists out certain people who they're very interested in getting communications between Donald Trump and those people, which reads essentially, like a roll call of co-conspirators, according to the committee from Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, on down the line. So yes, I think they're definitely anticipating probably, correctly, some pushback from Donald Trump here.

BLACKWELL: Gloria, to you now. The committee lays out here that this is not unprecedented.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. BLACKWELL: That they have -- the committee -- the Congress has spoken with presidents, as a result, have received documents as results of subpoenas. But this is an historic moment. Give us the big picture of this moment.

BORGER: It is an historic moment. But talking about anticipatory statements from the committee, there is an entire paragraph devoted to what you're talking about. And they talk about President Roosevelt and how he had to testify. And they quote Roosevelt in it, saying an ex- president is merely a citizen of the United States, like any other citizen, and it is his plain duty to try to help this committee or respond to its invitation.

So -- and then they listed a number of other former presidents who testified either in office or out of office because they know that Donald Trump is going to come back and say they're singling me out, I'm a victim here, you know, and then the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago when they had no reason to search Mar-a-Lago, and on and on and on. So it is anticipatory. But it is also very direct about what they want.

One other thing I noticed here is that they specifically talk about communications, as they usually do, sent or received, but they mentioned Signal or other means. And then, following the list of people starting with Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, etcetera. So it sort of makes me wonder whether they're saying, oh, maybe some of these people were communicating with the president through Signal. We don't know. Maybe they do.

HILL: When it comes to -- Evan, when it comes to communications for people who are not familiar with Signal and why people would want to communicate on Signal versus in a text or using something like WhatsApp that people may be more familiar with. Just remind us why people might choose Signal.

PEREZ: Well, they were trying to avoid having any record of those of -- those kinds -- of those communications being found on government -- for instance, on government systems. The Trump administration, let's just say has a very storied history with this. Beginning from the -- at the start of the administration, there was a crackdown by people in the White House because they knew that White House aides were leaking to reporters using Signal and they tried to go through people's phones to see if they were using Signal to communicate with reporters.

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That was one of the first things that happened in the opening ones of the -- of the Trump administration. Of course, it did not stop the leaks and it did not stop people from the administration from using it. And so we've seen this repeatedly, in some of the communications that we've seen used by the Justice Department and some investigations.

We've seen them use being able to capture Signal communications, communications from WhatsApp. Because simply put, you know, just because you're using Signal doesn't mean you're using it correctly. A lot of people don't realize that sometimes, even though it's encrypted, there is sometimes a way for those communications to be captured on devices. And if the FBI or someone seizes those devices, they can still get those communications. So that's what the committee is going after.

And I think one of the things that certainly we know, we have the top officials in the former administration, you know, use all kinds of means to evade. We've seen the Justice Department recently accused Peter Navarro of using personal devices to avoid having communications captured that are, you know, on Whitehouse devices. So it is a theme that has run through the entire administration, and I think that's one of the reasons why the committee goes there in this letter. They're basically just trying to cover all of the bases, all of the ways that people around the former president may have been trying to communicate around this whole effort to overturn the election.

BLACKWELL: Sara, page three of this letter in all of the documents that you outline that they've asked for, they say that for any document described in this schedule, you may make relevant objections in a privilege log. Now, we have known certainly the president to fight everything on either personal or executive privilege, but he's just hired, as we reported yesterday on this show, Harmeet Dhillon, this conservative trial lawyer, in anticipation of this subpoena, and we know in the document case, as well from DOJ that they've suggested, maybe this supervised search of Mar-a-Lago again, so we'll have to see if they ignore or fight on lines of this privilege log option of this subpoena.

MURRAY: Yes. I mean, I think that one of the things that we have learned from the Steve Bannon case today is probably just flat-out ignoring a subpoena is not the way that you want to go, it's probably good that the former president has, you know, their attorneys that he has tapped to look this over. I mean, a privilege log allows you to sort of go through and say here all these documents that we don't think we should be allowed to hand over to you because of executive privilege, because of some other kind of privilege, you know. We don't think you should have access to those.

By doing that you're at least showing some kind of engagement with the committee. You're saying, we have looked over your subpoena, we are beginning to look through the documents that might be responsive to this, and we're saying, you know, you do not get to access a number of these. So that's also the kind of thing that, you know, if you do decide to fight a subpoena like this in court, you can show to a judge and say, look, we made an effort, we started to look through these documents, and frankly, we don't think that the committee should have access to them, for X Y & Z reasons.

And again, we're talking about a subpoena that is pretty broad. The last item in this schedule that they're looking for is information to identify any telephone or communications device Trump may have used from November of 2020 to January of 2021. So not only do they want all this information from these communication devices, potentially from people he was asking to, you know, make calls or send documents on his behalf, but they also want to know exactly what electronics were you using during this timeframe. PEREZ: Hey, guys, what -- real quick. One thing I wanted to just quickly add to what Sara just said. Donald Trump is known -- you know he's infamous for not using any e-mail, not keeping any records. He tore up, you know, any things he wrote notes on. So one of the things that I think is interesting about this is that I believe, certainly because the committee has talked to dozens of witnesses and they've got -- they've gathered documents from all of these other people, they probably have a lot of the records that they're -- that they're talking about, in this letter to Donald Trump.

What they're really after is obviously the testimony and they want to make an effort to try to get his testimony and get his side and to see if there's anything that they have missed as part of their months-long investigation. They probably know a very, very -- they probably have a very, very good picture of all of these communications already based on again, months and thousands and -- hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that they've gotten for -- as part of other subpoenas to other witnesses.

HILL: Yes.

BORGER: You know, and we --

HILL: As I learned well from Eli Honig, you never go without letting them know. You want to make sure you have all of your -- of your bases covered. Stay with us, everybody, Eli Honig, Gloria Borger, Evan Perez, Sara Murray, we're going to have much more to come on this in just a second.

Also ahead here, a lot of health stories they're getting attention.

BLACKWELL: Yes, cases of respiratory viruses surging among children in the U.S. Pediatric hospitals are running out of room. We'll speak with two doctors impacted by the surge. That's ahead.

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BLACKWELL: We're pushing forward with the breaking news now. The January 6 committee has just subpoenaed the former president, Donald Trump. Back with us, CNN's Evan Perez, CNN's senior legal analyst Elie Honig, CNN's chief political analyst, Gloria Borger. Elie, we've been reading through the letter accompanying the subpoena. And I want to read the last sentence here of page four here and they write. The select committee looks forward to your cooperation with the subpoena. I'm sure whoever typed that, smirked as they were keying through it. What are the options next for the former president as he now reads through the request?

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HONIG: Yes, I think that's an optimistic statement there, Victor. So, Donald Trump really has three options here. One, he can comply. He can turn over all the requested documents by November 4. He can show up to testify on November 14. But important to know, what the committee is saying here is you are commanded to show up for a deposition, behind closed doors, which will be done by our staff and our members. And they do make a point of noting several of whom are former federal prosecutors, wink-wink. Now that's option one. Unlikely Donald Trump fully complies.

Option two is Donald Trump's team can try to negotiate with the committee and say, well, he'll testify about these topics, but not these other topics. He'll give you some documents. In the real world, that happens quite frequently. We'll see if they're able to find some agreement here. And option number three for Donald Trump is just outright defiance, I refuse, no way, make me.

HILL: You know, we went -- one thing else that stood out to me when we're talking about what the legal response could be. And we were talking before the break about how much information is actually in this letter here. There's a note -- specifically, we were talking about privilege before the break, but it specifically talks about the validity of the asserted privilege thing. We recognize the Supreme Court has ruled former presidents retain the limited ability to assert executive privilege going on to say that's qualified. Noting the DC Circuit explained specifically in the case of Trump V. Thompson, that if there's a uniquely compelling need, you might have to give up the information, Eli.

HONIG: Yes. So this is what's known as a flex. Basically, the committee is reminding Donald Trump, hey, you tried to invoke executive privilege before in a dispute over documents -- White House documents with the Archives, and you lost in the courts, the DC Circuit, as you just said, Erica, shot that down, the Supreme Court refused to take up the case. And basically, they said, as a former president, you have a very limited if any interest in invoking executive privilege.

And so the committee's reminding Donald Trump, if you want to try to invoke executive privilege here, go ahead, you have to let us know soon, and we intend to take it to court. And by the way, we had this fight once before, and we won, and the courts have rejected your executive privilege claim.

BORGER: And look at what Judge Carter said yesterday. I mean, Judge Carter went even further and said, you know, there's no privilege in these four documents if it looks like a crime might have been committed. The committee did not use that as an example because I think they didn't want to push that far. But that is certainly been the record of Judge Carter in the case of the Mar-a-Lago document.

BLACKWELL: Gloria, I was going to come to you on, you know, this long list of information they want from Signal, from any of these electronic devices.

BORGER: And what the committee has shown us over the last several months is that they have so much more than it's public, then we're seeing and hearing in these hearings, they might have so much of this already from some other interview some other source.

BORGER: Yes. And this goes back to the point that Evan was making, which is, they have a lot of these communications, and what they're probably doing, and a lot of these things is triage because they may know what was in these conversations. And we've reported, you know, months ago, that it was also Donald Trump's habit very often, to turn to an aide and say, give me your phone or call so and so, and use that person's phone add to have the phone conversation.

Whether those conversations were on Signal not on Signal, you know, whether they were just over the Transom, we don't know. So my guess is -- as Evan was saying is that they do know what a lot of these conversations were. They do know what was being said, but not from the president himself. You know, he often went out of his way to avoid the White House switchboard, as we know, from January 6.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

HILL: And that may be another flex right saying, hey, we know these communications happened.

BORGER: Right.

HILL: We would like to see more of them.

BORGER: Exactly.

HILL: Evan, in this letter, the committee mentioned some legislative recommendations, interesting that those were put in there. PEREZ: Yes. Look, I think that's a pre-bottle because we've seen this

argument in some of the litigation by Steve Bannon and some of the other people who have been subpoenaed by this committee, and one of the things that they've argued claimed by the former president himself in that litigation over those records, that the -- that the committee got from the National Archives.

One of the things they point out that they've argued is that you know, this committee is a political committee. There are you know, not any Republicans that were -- he -- that were proved by the leadership of the Republicans on the -- in the House, and so, therefore, there is no legitimate legislative purpose for this committee. And obviously, they've lost that argument a couple of times.

But here the committee goes ahead and points it out once more just in case this goes before a different judge and it -- then they say as is likely obvious from the topics identified, we're considering multiple legislative recommendations intended to provide further assurance that no future president could succeed at anything even remotely similar to the unlawful steps you took.

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This is them pre-butting what they expect the former president and his legal team to go big on, which is that this is a political committee that has no real purpose.

HILL: Well, we ever be watching for that response. Elie Honig, Gloria Borger, Evan Perez, appreciate it. Thank you all.

BORGER: Thank you.

BLACKWELL: All right. Some of the documents the FBI recovered from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate include highly sensitive intelligence regarding China and Iran. That's according to new reporting from the Washington Post.

HILL: Sources tell the paper at least one document has information about Iran's missile program. Devlin Barrett broke the story and joins us now. So, Devlin, do you have a sense from your sources of just how detailed that information is?

DEVLIN BARRETT, JUSTICE REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, it's described as pretty detailed to us. And you know that these are among the most worrisome things that the FBI has found in the course of its investigation. Just because the potential harm of it falling into the wrong hands would be so great.

BLACKWELL: Yes. The Post reported some time back that some of the documents included information about foreign nuclear capabilities. Is there any clarity is if these were the Iranian-related documents if those are the same?

BARRETT: That part we still don't know. We don't know if that is also a description -- that description also applies to the Iranian document or the China documents, or something else. There's still a lot to figure out here. But I think what's important about this section is it speaks to the severity of potential harm that might have happened if this information had gotten out into the wild.

HILL: And it also, right, brings up the concern that there could still be documents that we heard about -- there could still be documents there. It's not just Iran. Your reporting says other documents describe highly sensitive intelligence work aimed at China as well.

BARRETT: Right. And so some of these documents we're told describe intelligence-gathering activities targeting China. And obviously, China is a -- is one of the major U.S. adversaries in the world. And that relationship is very tense, particularly on the intelligence front. And if you call back a couple of years, you'll remember that we recent -- our country recently lost a lot of intelligence assets in the -- in the China space. And so obviously, anything that could cause further damage to our intelligence gathering capability over there is very concerning.

BLACKWELL: And of course, we remember that there was a Chinese national who was arrested there who was on the property at Mar-a-Lago, the president's resort.

HILL: Correct.

BLACKWELL: Did your source give you any details about what would be jeopardized if these were to fall into the wrong hands if those sources and methods would be jeopardized?

BARRETT: Well, again, if the -- what would be at risk would be sensitive intelligence work at China. And obviously, if that -- if that were exposed, those sources and methods would almost certainly be compromised and to the degree that, you know, there could be a potential danger to individuals. And so that's important.

One other thing that our reporting shows is that a lot of these documents were top-level analysis documents. So there has been a lot of concern over human sources being identified in these documents. We're told that there aren't -- there aren't -- even in the most sensitive documents, there aren't many names of individuals. So that is less of a concern. But there is still very, very sensitive information in these documents.

BLACKWELL: All right, Devlin Barrett, with the Washington Post breaking these details, I thank you for coming on to discuss the reporting with us.

BARRETT: Thank you.

HILL: Ukraine's President warns of a Russian plot to destroy a critical hydroelectric plant near Kherson. We're going to speak about the implications with a member of the Biden administration just ahead. That's next.

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