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New Special Counsel Speeds Ahead in Trump Probe; Congress Faces Government Shutdown; Winter Weather Alerts Across U.S.; New York Urges Mask Wearing; Hospitals Under Strain; Griner Doing Well. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired December 12, 2022 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:01:04]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Good Monday morning to you, I'm Jim Sciutto.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Erica Hill.

It is crunch time on Capitol Hill. With just five days left now to avoid a government shutdown, CNN has learned lawmakers are inching closer to a deal on a year-long government spending bill, but with that Friday deadline fast approaching Congress may have to settle on -- stop if you've heard me this - heard this one before -- perhaps a week-long stopgap measure to give some more time for talks. So we're going to take a closer look at where those negotiations stand.

SCIUTTO: Yes, yes, I feel like we've talked about this before.

HILL: Once or twice.

SCIUTTO: You might even call it an annual tradition in Washington.

HILL: Yes.

SCIUTTO: And new CNN reporting this morning, the newly appointed special counsel, Jack Smith, is, according to CNN reporting, moving full speed ahead, in charge of two criminal probes involving the former president, Donald Trump. He's already making a series of high- profile moves. We have the details and what they mean.

Plus, a powerful winter storm is moving across the country, zeroing in on 16 states. Whiteouts and blizzard conditions expected out west. Severe weather with high winds and tornadoes in the south as well. We're going to be live in the CNN Weather Center with the latest. Will we get some snow?

HILL: Yes, a lot of snow.

First let's begin, though, with that new CNN reporting.

Newly appointed special counsel Jack Smith moving fast on a pair of criminal probes around former President Donald Trump.

SCIUTTO: With us, CNN senior crime and justice reporter Katelyn Polantz. So this was a big appointment here. There's now a special counsel. There is some talk about whether this would slow things down. You've got a new boss in charge. But you're saying that's not happening.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Yes, there's speed here and there's also focus.

So, as far as our understanding is, we had a whole reporting team looking into how this special counsel's office was being set up in these first couple weeks he's been in charge. And the one big takeaway we found is that there are -- there's a very large team of prosecutors working on this, already twice the size of the Mueller investigation, 20 prosecutors that Smith will step in and be the manager of working on January 6th alone.

SCIUTTO: Wow.

POLANTZ: That's a lot of people taking this on.

And one of the things they found -- that we found is that the prosecutors are asking witnesses at this time about, was there a plan to steal the election? That seems really obvious, but what they're asking is about Donald Trump's knowledge, his belief of what would happen on January 6th, his intent. That's the sort of thing --

SCIUTTO: That's the point, intent, because we've talked frequently about how key intent is to any possible criminal charges.

POLANTZ: Totally. But, Jim, one of the things that's really fascinating is that Trump's team is not too worried. His allies are telling us that with Jack Smith coming in as special counsel that doesn't necessarily mean that much. Even if Trump is out there saying witch-hunt, witch-hunt, witch-hunt, they're not concerned in the same way right now that they were with the Mueller investigation. One of the quotes was the fact they found a guy who has been in Europe for the past several years without his brain marinating in the soup of January 6th coverage, that's a good thing. They also think if there were to be a case brought against Donald Trump, it would be very hard to prove in court.

Of course, there's still a risk involved with any investigation that's ongoing, but the entire landscape here is a bit different than the Mueller investigation.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Well, we'll see if Trump's legal team is right on that prognostication.

Katelyn Polantz, thanks so much.

HILL: Joining us now to discuss, former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti.

Good to see you this morning, Renato.

So, what Katelyn just laid out for us there, these 20 prosecutors on January 6th alone, the speed and the focus as she said when it comes to this investigation for DOJ, does it seem that that is sort of more speed than you would have anticipated based on the last few months?

RENATO MARIOTTI, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: You know, I have to say, Erica, I was somebody who was pretty bullish on the appointment of a special counsel. I really did not agree with - with some of the predictions that that would slow things down. From my perspective, this is different than the Mueller investigation. Remember, the Mueller investigation was investigating events that had just happened. Trump had just fired Comey, special counsel was appointed regarding that and other matters.

[09:05:05]

And, in fact, the special counsel, the prior one, Robert Mueller, he investigated things that happened during the course of his own investigation when Trump was trying to fire him. That isn't the case here.

What you have is Jack Smith coming in, in an investigation that is already ongoing. And in the Mueller investigation, he did -- he did take over one piece of an investigation that was ongoing, the Manafort case.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

MARIOTTI: That was a case that had already been investigated, already had a team in place. He indicted him within five months.

I actually think the Mar-a-Lago piece here is going to go the fastest. I would not be surprised if we saw an indictment in 2023.

SCIUTTO: Renato, you heard Katelyn relating the Trump legal team's view that, well, Jack Smith, he's been over in Europe, he hasn't been germinating, as they say, in the coverage of the January 6th hearings and that gives them some sort of advantage here. I wonder if you believe that's right.

MARIOTTI: Well, I do think having somebody with fresh eyes might be helpful for January 6th. I think that that is a much harder case for the Justice Department to bring than Mar-a-Lago, whereas I think the Mar-a-Lago documents case is very straightforward.

But as a practical matter, let's be real here, a special counsel leaving his job to take over here is not doing so in order to decline these cases. You know, frankly, if he did not think that there was a serious chance of charging these cases, I don't think he would have taken the job. So, there's a bit of wish casting there.

SCIUTTO: Yes, and I imagine he'll follow the evidence rather than the coverage.

Renato Mariotti, thanks so much, as always.

MARIOTTI: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: All right, now to Capitol Hill as lawmakers face a familiar deadline in Washington, this one is five days, reach a deal by Friday or risk a government shutdown. What do they have to do? They have to figure out how to fund the government.

HILL: CNN congressional correspondent Lauren Fox joining us now.

So, the standoff, this is just one of the first takes. It's something we've come to, as Jim pointed out earlier, I almost feel like this has become part of the holiday season that we get to this point where we talk about how are we going to make this happen.

SCIUTTO: Yes. The worst part of the holiday season, yes.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The most wonderful time of the year up here on Capitol Hill. Yes, this is a must pass funding deadline. It's coming up on Friday. Lawmakers coming back to Washington today. And they all acknowledged the reality, they're going to need a little more time.

They're going to have to pass a short-term spending bill in order to get them just a few more days to continue these negotiations. Over the weekend, aides that I'm talking to say that they did make a little more progress, but the key sticking points still remain and they still have not agreed to how much money to spend next year. They're about $25 billion apart. That, obviously, a significant amount of money. For the government, that's a little bit less significant of an amount of money. But they are still working through those differences.

That leaves them really with two choices at the end of the day. Once they get past Friday, they have about another week to negotiate if they pass that short-term spending bill. Then they can either keep funding levels at what they were last year, that is less desirable from the White House because of inflation, because of other factors, they want more flexibility in terms of how they deal with spending next year.

They're going to continue to try and pass an omnibus. That, of course, would set new funding levels for the next year. But there is a long, long way to go. And the fact they still can't even agree on how much money to spend tells you that this is a difficult task ahead.

Jim and Erica.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HILL: Certainly is.

Lauren Fox, we know you'll keep us posted on those developments. Appreciate it. Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Well, this morning, 16 states are under winter weather alerts as a major storm system is moving across the country.

HILL: Over the weekend, the storm blanketed parts of northern California and Nevada with heavy snow. Check this out, from Soda Springs 60 inches of snow in 48 hours.

SCIUTTO: Wow.

HILL: Five feet.

SCIUTTO: Wow.

HILL: Now the severe weather taking aim at the central U.S. as it makes its way across the country.

Meteorologist --

SCIUTTO: That's about one Erica Hill, right, five feet plus maybe seven inches or so, right? That's a lot of snow.

HILL: You know, yes, I -- I was 5'8", I shrunk a little bit, but yes.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HILL: Meteorologist Chad Myers in the CNN Weather Center.

So, I am kind of obsessed with the weather because it feels like this is the first big storm that we're seeing that is really encompassing the majority of the country.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It is. Absolutely. This is almost a repeat of what we had the same time last year that put California way up on the snow map and go, yay, here we go, we're really going to get snow, and then January, February, March it didn't snow at all and all of a sudden we were back horribly in the drought. But this was a major storm. Five feet of snow. You melt that down, that's 5 inches of water that's going to get into the ground, going to get into the streams and going to get into the reservoirs.

But now we move this to the east. We move this into Colorado. We move this into Salt Lake City, into the Wasach (ph). And then farther off towards the east, where it's warmer, that's where the severe weather will be. This is really a spring-type storm happening as we go into winter. Spring, the cold air is here and the warm air wants to be here.

[09:10:01]

Winter, well, the warm air is here and the cold air wants to be. It's the same fight, it's just a different fight.

The radar doesn't show it very well in the mountains there with snow, but these are the areas you were talking about. And the area in red, right here, blizzard warnings going to be put there. When you get winds at 30 to 45 miles per hour and very heavy snow, two feet of snow, but there will never be two feet anywhere. It will be scoured and then in the ditches or in the hedgerows. That's where the snow will start to really, really just drift up.

This is going to be difficult travel for I-80, I-76, 70, all the way even into Colorado itself and up into the front range.

Here's the storm system here with thunderstorms, could be tornadoes, too. Here is the snow back out to the west. The front range really gets in it tomorrow. And this is really going. The wind's just going to pick up, 40 to 50 miles per hour with heavy snow. That's what blizzard is going to come from. Visibility less than a quarter mile at times.

But then we're going to watch this area throughout the afternoon because that's where it's going to warm up. The sun's actually going to come out and severe thunderstorms will fire across parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, possibly all along the Gulf Coast, maybe as far east as Panama City.

SCIUTTO: Wow.

MYERS: This is a big storm. The rain is from Georgia with the snow still all the way back expected over the next two days to Nevada. That's how large this thing is.

SCIUTTO: Wow.

HILL: It is massive to see such a chunk of that map covered here.

SCIUTTO: Wow.

MYERS: Yes.

HILL: All right, Chad, I guess we - we're going to keep you busy this week, my friend.

MYERS: You will.

HILL: Thank you.

Still to come here, health officials in major cities across the country revisiting their guidance on when you should mask up as they follow this spread of multiple respiratory illnesses. Where you may want to think twice, maybe want to grab that mask before you head out the door. What the experts are saying, next.

SCIUTTO: Plus, the Treasury secretary is forecasting lower inflation next year. Will that dissuade Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell from bumping up interest rates again this week or more likely trim down the size of that rate increase. We'll have a look.

And a high-speed splash down. Now NASA prepares for the second phase of its mission to put people back on Mars. How Sunday's landing, a successful one, boosted that quest. That's coming up.

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[09:16:26]

SCIUTTO: Health officials in several cities are now recommending that residents mask up this holiday season. This amid an uptick in a trifecta of illnesses, not just Covid-19 but also RSV and the flu. They're affecting millions of Americans currently putting a strain on hospitals across the country.

HILL: And that has officials in Los Angeles, Seattle, Oregon, here in New York City, all recommending, important to note, though, not mandating, but advising a return to mask wearing in certain situations.

CNN's Athena Jones joining us now.

So here in New York I know health officials pretty clear to say, this is an advisory again it's not a mandate, but they also say it doesn't matter your vaccination status.

ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. The bottom line is, you still can get Covid as we know from many examples of people in our own families and lives, even though you are vaccinated. But being vaccinated is much - is very, very protective.

So, this is happening because New York City health officials what they're calling this unusually high concurrent spikes of these three respiratory illnesses we've been talking so much about and because it's the holiday season so people are going to be gathering with friends and family and health officials want people to be as safe as probable. So they're urging not just masking but a number of measures. Limit attendance at large indoor gathering, wear a mask even in outdoor crowded areas, and also asking people to wear a mask and get a Covid-19 test if you're going to be gathering.

And, of course, these precautions are especially important for people who are especially vulnerable, infants, the immunocompromised, people over 65 and, of course, they say use a high-quality mask, not just a KN -

HILL: Yes.

JONES: Oh, well, use a KN95 or a KF94 or an N95 not - not just a simple cloth mask. Wear an effective mask.

But, you know, this is - this is something that we're seeing, not just in New York. As you mentioned, those several other cities. Los Angeles. Oregon is one of the places. This is a state where hospital beds are more than 85 percent full.

HILL: Wow.

JONES: This is an area where officials are recommending masking.

Los Angeles County is also just recommending it. And so is the Seattle metro area. Health officials there in three of that state's -- Washington state's most populous counties are recommending masking.

But the thing is, you know, no one wants to go back to the battle old days of Covid surges, but a lot of people do not feel like masking is for them.

HILL: Yes.

JONES: And so I think a lot of officials, even Anthony Fauci, you know, the president's top health advisor, said you -- they don't want to force this on people. HILL: Right.

JONES: They don't think that people will react well to mandates.

HILL: Probably not, but they're going to give you the information to hopefully make the best decision for you and for your family.

I have to say, I've definitely seen an uptick here in New York City of people wearing masks.

JONES: Definitely. Especially in the subway.

HILL: Yes.

Athena, thank you.

SCIUTTO: CNN's senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now.

And, Elizabeth, the data here, it's concerning. It's understandable because many hospitals are seeing a real uptick in admissions here. But I'm sure health officials know they have a challenge, right, given that some folks are going to hear these recommendations, even though they're not mandates, and say, hey, you know, I'm over that. So how do they - how do they balance that? How do health officials balance that?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I think it's definitely a tough balancing act. We know that people don't want to hear this. But I'm going to show you a graph, and Athena mentioned this, the incredibly high stress on hospitals. I thought this was -- I was actually surprised, I had to look at it twice. But look at this graph. On the right-hand side that is hospital bed capacity. They are at over percent 80 -- over 80 percent capacity. That's higher than any point during the pandemic. In other words, it's worse now than it was during the heat of the pandemic. That says a lot about how much flu and RSV and other respiratory illnesses are out there. It also says something about our hospitals. They're not what they used to be.

[09:20:00]

They are so understaffed. They are having such trouble getting doctors and nurses. So many of them left during the pandemic that it's really hard to keep these places at full capacity.

There are a couple of other images I want to show you. They're so important here.

This map. This is a CDC map of where we're seeing high rates of flu and other respiratory diseases. If it's purple, if it's red, that is a high or a very high rate. You'll see that almost the entire country is red or purple. That means almost the entire country is seeing very high rates of these respiratory illnesses.

And, by the way, you don't need to be an epidemiologist to know that. I mean I know so many of my friends are so sick and family members are so sick. The last map speaks to the masking and I think kind of answers your

question. The communities that are in red here, those counties, they are, according to the CDC -- the CDC says we really want you to be wearing masks indoors. That's 14 percent of the U.S. population is supposed to be wearing masks indoors according to the CDC. We know that that is not the case. We know that -- all you have to do is walk around to know that most people are not adhering to that. So, they're really going to have to think of some other measures that will work.

Certainly, the first one is, get yourself vaccinated. Be up to date with your Covid vaccines and get yourself vaccinated against flu. It is not too late. Even if you don't want to wear a mask, do your part, get yourself vaccinated, think about all those doctors and nurses and other patients that you're going to be helping out.

Jim. Poppy.

HILL: Elizabeth, appreciate it. Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Erica, by the way.

New this morning --

HILL: That's all right. Elizabeth and I go way back. She knows.

SCIUTTO: It happens.

New this morning, the WNBA all-star Brittney Griner made her return to the basketball court on Sunday during a light workout in Texas just days after coming back to the U.S. after nearly ten months of imprisonment in a penal colony in Russia. And she didn't have a bad start.

HILL: No, her first move, a dunk. Her agent, though, says despite the workout, Griner is still unsure at this point whether she'll play again for the WNBA, for the Phoenix Mercury.

CNN's Kylie Atwood joining us now from the State Department with more.

So, she is still, Kylie, at Brook Army Medical Center there in San Antonio. Do we have any more information this morning on how she's doing in terms of her recovery and also on the administration's efforts when it comes to Paul Whelan?

SCIUTTO: Yes.

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think the best indication is the fact that she was able to dunk a basketball over the weekend, right? I mean it demonstrates that she has energy.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ATWOOD: She is driven to get back to the basketball court. As you guys said, no news about if she will actually return to playing basketball professionally. But we do know from all accounts everyone who has seen her says she's doing incredibly well. Roger Carstens, who is the special envoy for hostage affairs here at the State Department, he traveled with her back to the United States. And when she got on the plane, he described her as incredibly energetic. He said, hey, you can sit over there, take your time, and she immediately said, no, I've been, you know, talking to no one in Russia, I want to talk to people. She introduced herself to everyone in the crew on that plane and he said that she spoke for about 12 of the 16 hours on the flight home.

So, she is still undergoing these medical checks. We don't have a definitive estimation as to how long that will check. But by all accounts she's doing incredibly well.

And then the other thing that we should note is that we are continuing to ask questions of the Biden administration in terms of how they're going to get home Paul Whelan. That's that other American who's still wrongfully detained in Russia going on four years now. And we just heard from Roger Carstens this morning on ABC who said that the Biden administration is meeting today. U.S. officials meeting today to discuss next steps in the strategy to bring home Whelan. And he also told our colleague Dana Bash over the weekend that there's always cards that the U.S. can put on the table.

Now, the question is, what kind of cards will Russia accept here to get Paul Whelan home because they weren't able to get him home as a part of this prisoner swap that brought home Griner. But rest assured, he said to Paul Whelan, who he spoke with on Friday, that the U.S. government is really doing everything that they can and this is an ongoing productive effort for them.

Guys.

SCIUTTO: Yes. It will be interesting to see how far Russia tries to squeeze things this time.

Kylie Atwood, thanks so much.

Well, still ahead, the Treasury secretary predicts that 2023 will bring some relief on inflation. That's good news. You're hearing that from a lot of folks. That, however, will not change the holiday shopping prices many Americans are seeing right now.

HILL: We are just moments away now from the opening bell on Wall Street. U.S. stock futures marginally higher than where they ended the week on Friday. All three markets did lose ground on Friday, but investors critically focused now on inflation this week as the November Consumer Price Index comes our way. That is slated for Tuesday. The Federal Reserve's two-day meeting begins that same day. Chair Jerome Powell's announcement on another possible rate hike. That is expected Wednesday.

[09:25:00]

Traders do anticipate, though, if it is an increase, it will be a smaller move than in recent months. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

The Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, says she is doing everything possible to avert a recession and had some positive news for the new year.

[09:30:00]