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Severe Storm Slams U.S. with Bitter Cold, Strong Winds, Heavy Snow; Thousands of Flight Cancelations, Delays as Winter Storm Hits; Jan. 6 Committee Recommends Banning Trump from Holding Office. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired December 23, 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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[10:00:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the hour. I'm Jim Sciutto.

In short, it is cold. The powerful winter storm battering the U.S., expected to grow even stronger, even colder today. The bitter cold prompting wind chill alerts covering nearly half of the U.S. population. Parts of the country could see the coldest Christmas they've seen in decades. Subzero temperatures hitting hard out west. Here is the owner of a local towing company in Great Falls, Montana, speaking with CNN this morning.

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GARETH OX LEA, OWNER, OX & SON TOWING: It is just definitely cold up here. And, I mean, if you ain't prepared for it, it could be really bad.

I've been here 20 years and this is the worst I've ever felt.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Wow, tough time to be a towing company. Right now, hundreds of thousands of people are without power. That is tough in the cold, many of them in the southeast. Travel plans upended for many going to the holiday weekend, more than 3,500 flights canceled already today and counting. Here is the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg.

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PETE BUTTIGIEG, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: Lots of things are so important to us around the holidays, our traditions, our loved ones. But, of course, the most important thing is to be safe, to be alive and well for your loved ones, and that means making smart choices when it comes to driving conditions and road conditions.

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SCIUTTO: Yes, your loved ones want you safe most of all. We are covering all angles of this massive winter storm around the country. Let's begin in one of the coldest, the Buffalo area, where are a driving ban is now in effect.

CNN's Polo Sandoval among the brave ones braving the temperatures out there. Man, it looks bad, Polo. Just give us a sense. I mean, it got even worse in the last hour?

POLO SANDOVALS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: (INAUDIBLE). I'll ask my colleagues here to just show you what the conditions are like here on the ground in Buffalo. Really, what we have seen is these restrictions put in place by authorities because of the concern of these white-out conditions.

We started this morning at about 6:00 A.M. with barely a drizzle, temperatures in the upper 30s, but, boy, did the situation just begin to deteriorate extremely quickly, so much so that officials here in Erie County, New York, have instituted a travel ban, meaning only essential traffic is allowed on the highways and roads right now.

Many concerns to tell you about here, one of them is, of course, that folks might get sort of disoriented with these white-out conditions and get stuck on the side of the road and it could lead to tragedy there. But also this storm, as it continues to barrel eastward, it is bringing these just wicked winter winds and with it basically pushing a lot of water in nearby Lake Erie, which is less than a mile from where I'm standing and from where the pictures are being taken and sourcing much of the water closer and closer to some of the coastal communities.

And that is why there are some of the communities where they even urge residents to evacuate leading up to the storm and that's where they are recommending that people continue to stay vigilant and keep an eye on water level because this is a storm, according to local officials here, that is unlike anything that many folks who lived here have ever seen before with those lake levels expected to be really just extremely high, some of the highest they've seen in perhaps decades.

But, again, these pictures give you an idea of what the situation is like on the ground and this is really just getting started, authorities say, that this is going to continue into tomorrow. Back to you.

SCIUTTO: Goodness, and, well, sad to see that some folks seem to be disobeying that no travel order. Folks, listen to the warnings. They're important. Polo Sandoval, thanks so much.

All right, CNN's Pete Muntean, he is at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Pete, there is nothing worse showing up at the airport, you packed your bags and you brought the kids and then you see canceled by your flight. What do the numbers look like now?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The good news here, Jim, is that airlines, in large part, are preemptively canceling flights. Meaning that folks are finding out on their phone before they get to the airport, which maybe one reason why we've seen the crowds thin a little bit here, in fact, at Chicago O'Hare.

The numbers, according to FlightAware, right now, 3,576 cancelations nationwide.

[10:05:04]

We are almost more than a thousand over what we saw yesterday, 2,600 nationwide. We've already really dwarfed that number as the storm not only affects the Midwest but now is moving east.

We're seeing some new airports pop up on the list. It was O'Hare, which is a big hub for United Airlines, and Detroit, a big hub for Delta, now, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Boston, those airports will be impacted by this storm.

The FAA says the delays are going to really be driven by how airports handle the ground game, how quickly they de-ice planes and get them on their way. But for passengers, it's really going to be a game now of a needle in a haystack. If you get rebooked on to a different flight, there simply may be not be enough seats. Passenger volume has gone up to near pre-pandemic levels. But Scott Keyes of Scott's Cheap Flights says there just aren't as many seats available from the airlines these days. Listen.

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SCOTT KEYES, SCOTT'S CHEAP FLIGHTS: We hear how travel volume is down 5 or 10 percent, but what many folks might not have realized is that the number of the flights in the sky is actually down more like 15 percent or 20 percent. So, the planes that are actually flying are more full today than they were pre-pandemic.

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MUNTEAN: It is not just passengers, it is also packages being transported by airplanes, and that is effecting shipments at UPS and the FedEx and the United States Postal Service. Some of the packages are expected to arrive on the doorstep on Christmas morning may be delayed now because of this huge weather system, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Goodness, so much to factor in. Pete Muntean, thanks so much.

All right, let's go to Denver now where wind chill warnings are in effect throughout the day. The city experienced a remarkable 37-degree plunge. It comes so quickly.

CNN's Lucy Kafanov joins us now from Denver with what she's seeing there. So, what is it like and is relief expected any time soon?

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Relief is expected soon, Jim. And while the worst of the storm is over, you can see the city getting back to normal, it doesn't feel like it is getting back to normal because of the wind chills. We've had now 37 consecutive hours of below freezing, below zero temperatures. That is not going to change until after around 11:00 A.M. local time here in Colorado. This is normally a very busy downtown area. You can see a lot of the snow has been plowed. We've got about four inches of snow at the height of the storm, businesses are reopening, folks are slowly getting back to normal. But this was a painful experience and some historic temperatures swings. I mean, we were talking on Wednesday, it was nearly 50 degrees Fahrenheit. That swung down by 75 degrees. We saw minus 24 degrees temperatures on Thursday morning. The wind chill making it feel a lot worse, a lot more dangerous.

The critical thing that authorities have been asking folks to do is not be outdoors. So, folks are being urged to stay at home. There have been shelters and warming centers opened for anyone that needs to get out of the cold. But there is good news on the horizon, Jim. We are expecting the temperatures to climb by Christmas. It could be nearly 50 degrees. I know that is not the case for the East Coast. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Can't go soon enough. Lucy Kafanov, thanks so much.

So, joining me now is the mayor of Denver, Michael Hancock. Mayor Hancock, thanks so much for joining us this morning.

MAYOR MICHAEL HANCOCK (D-DENVER, CO): Jim, always good to be with you. Thanks for having me.

SCIUTTO: So, as our reporter was just saying there, the recommendation had been don't go outdoors, right, I mean, just try to stay safe and warm at home. Are people heeding those warnings?

HANCOCK: Yes, absolutely, for the most part. I mean, dangerously cold here and with the wind chill making it even worse. Yesterday, I woke up, it was minus 17. This morning right now, it's minus five. So, it is not safe for anyone to be outdoors. We know that there are some essential workers for almost every sector that have to get out and move. But Denver, though it doesn't typically get this cold, we're familiar with the slick streets and roads, and so we're pretty experienced. But it's still not safe for people to be outdoors if you don't have to get out, we ask people to stay indoors.

SCIUTTO: Yes. I was curious about that because, of course, Denver, it's familiar with cold weather. What in particular was tough about this one? I mean, was it the precipitous drop in temperatures?

HANCOCK: Absolutely. I mean, 30 degrees drop literally in a matter of minutes. You could literally, physically feel the temperatures dropping just -- this was on the Wednesday, where I was sitting somewhere, I could feel literally the temperatures drop. I was indoors but next to a window, and I could feel it. So, yes, it is very dangerous.

And, of course, when you add snow to it in Denver, typically, the snow will melt within 24 hours after an event.

[10:10:01]

But with these temperatures, it's going to be around for a while. SCIUTTO: Yes. It's interesting, this morning, I got to my car this morning, it was 44 degrees. It was supposed to be 10 degrees by the time I leave the office.

You had asked for federal help in particular due to an influx of migrants in the midst of this, this massive winter storm. I wonder, are you getting the help that you need?

HANCOCK: We've had conversations with the federal government. Right now, the best the federal government can do really is the emergency food shelter program that we could all apply for. We've also had conversations with the state. We'll receive some financial resources there. Denver as a city has already expended in excess of $2 million of its general fund since just the month of December. It started and we declared or activated emergency operations center and subsequently declared an emergency.

We've had over -- over 2,000 migrants come to Denver. You know, during the fall and winter months, we're 1,500 just this month alone. And, of course, we're dealing with a challenge across this nation with homelessness.

And so this is a really difficult situation for all cities around the country. I'm in conversation with mayors almost on a daily basis across this country and it is a challenge. Cities are bearing the brunt. And I've said this all week long, the inactivity and the lack of leadership coming out of Washington on this issue. We have had opportunities to address it. We have it as a nation. And it's because of the unfortunate partisan politics in Washington that has put us in this situation.

SCIUTTO: Well, you had roughly 1,300 migrants arrive in Denver just this month. What do you say to a phenomenon we've seen, which is some of the southern governors, border state governors, deliberately sending migrants north to cities like yours. What is your response to that?

HANCOCK: You know, I believe that those governors obviously are caught in the partisan web of politics again in this nation. That is unfortunate. But they're responding to the stress and pressure that they're feeling because they don't actually have the tools to respond to these surge of migrants that are coming to their states, just like the cities don't have any tools because we have not been afforded any policy, legislative leadership or, quite frankly, the physical and financial resources to address this issue out of Washington.

This is a national problem and when we have such a, surge like we've seen if Denver, certainly not on the level that El Paso had seen, but we're certainly seeing proportionately a challenge in our resources, that becomes a real problem because we're beginning to have opportunity costs where we're taken away from other services that we are working to respond to in our cities.

We want to be inclusive. We want to be open. We want to be -- act humanely but we need the federal government to assist this. And I think that is what those governors are reacting to and I know that's what we're reacting to here in Denver, Colorado.

SCIUTTO: Yes. I've heard that from Democrats and Republicans. It needs a legislative fix. It doesn't seem there's any momentum for that on the Hill.

Mayor Michael Hancock, we wish you luck, to you and the people, the city of Denver in the coming hours and days.

HANCOCK: Jim, happy holidays and thank you again.

SCIUTTO: And we're going to keep following this massive winter storm all morning, as it brings bitter cold, subzero wind chills, blizzard warnings as well. Later, we're going to head out near Lake Michigan, where snow and winds are creating dangerous conditions.

Plus, the highly anticipated final report from the January 6th committee is out. It says the attack on the Capitol can be blamed only on one man, and that man is former President Donald Trump.

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[10:15:00]

SCIUTTO: The final report from the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack lays the blame firmly on one man, former President Trump. The more than 800-page report came out last night after a year-and-a-half of investigations, witness testimony, hearings, it reads, quote, that evidence has led to an overriding and straightforward conclusion. The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.

CNN's Evan Perez joins me now. Evan, this has really been a year-and- a-half of revelations, some of which we've had live as they happen through testimony or through leaks and so on. What did the final report tell us that we didn't know?

PEREZ: Well, Jim, they had over a thousand witnesses who came in over these months of investigation. And one of the biggest things that you'd come away from is the amount of evidence that they found about the effort to get these fake electors in the states to try to support the idea that the former president could remain in office despite losing the election.

We'll show you just a few of the takeaways here. There were at least 200 attempts to pressure state officials to try to overturn their election results and to keep the former president in power, which is something, by the way, that is at the center of the criminal investigation at the Justice Department. So, we're going to hear more about that in months to come.

They also found that the president's decision to falsely claim victory was something that was premeditated. Obviously, that is the thing that ended up causing thousands of people to come to the Capitol and eventually cause the situation that it involved. Millions of dollars were raised by the former president and his allies as part of this effort. Obviously, even people at the RNC knew that there was a line that they couldn't cross on some of this.

And that, you know, even internally Trump was calling some of the ideas of some of his allies, people like Sidney Powell, he was calling those ideas crazy even though he was going publicly supporting this idea that he had won the election and, of course, ended up getting thousands of people to come here to support this idea.

[10:20:10]

So, what is next, right? The committee makes a number of key recommendations, and one of them is simply that the former president should be barred from ever holding office again. Of course, that is something that Congress is going to have to do. Criminal referrals, of course, have already gone to the Justice Department, we saw that this week. The Justice Department is looking at a number of things, including, of course, the possibility that people were obstructing the committee's investigation, which could be a crime.

Lawyers involved who are involved, we already are seeing this. They're getting sanctioned by the bar association, and many of them may not be able to be lawyers again because they played such a key role. And, of course, they're working on trying to overhaul the Electoral Count Act, which is something Congress has been working on for some point, for some time, the idea being you can't just try to overturn elections by using members of Congress to do that.

SCIUTTO: And that is one thing that made it into the omnibus bill. Evan Perez, thanks so much.

All right, joining me now to discuss, former U.S. Attorney Michael Moore, he's currently a partner at Moore Hall in Atlanta. Michael, good to have you back.

MICHAEL MOORE, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: Good to see you, Jim.

SCIUTTO: All right. So, the big questions here is did they establish evidence, did they find evidence that you, particularly as a lawyer, would say, okay, there is a crime here, right? If you connect the dots, I mean, 200 attempts to pressure state officials to overturn results, that it was premeditated, that they made plans for this and that Trump himself was saying some of these fraud ideas were crazy, seems to get to the question of intent here, right? When you connect those dots, do you see a viable case?

MOORE: Well, I'm glad to be with you. I think there is evidence in the report that will be used by the special prosecutor. But I also think that in some respect, the report was sort of long on smoke and short on fire when we got here, and that is because Trump has done a remarkable job of keeping a buffer between himself and the courtroom, at least in the criminal process.

And so, for instance, there will be some First Amendment challenges, whether or not the fact that the says something and other people decide they're going to do crazy things, like Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and all this. Is he responsible for that if he gives a political speech? That is going to be an issue that will be litigated in the appellate courts.

SCIUTTO: On that point, Michael, we saw him on The Ellipse that day. I mean, he said, the election was stolen. He said theft. He said, we're going to the Capitol and I'm going with you. I know that we've got a First Amendment in this country. From a legal perspective, does that verge towards inciting the crowd to do what it did?

MOORE: I think it will verge that way. And I think there will be a real question about political speech and First Amendment protections that get raised in the case, if that is the way this go. It looks to me like probably the cleaner case based on the evidence or things like efforts to -- witness tampering, if some people can be flipped to say that Trump told them to do that. Whether or not there were efforts to put in, in fact, a slate of fake electors, will people flip to say that Trump directed them to do that? Those are cases to me that looked cleaner based on the evidence.

We also know that this is a gift to the prosecutor to have these kinds of statements and investigation, notes and reports to him before he begins. At the same time, he's now under a duty to report inconsistencies, things that may be exculpatory, for instance, Ms. Hutchinson's testimony, whether or not Trump attacked the limo driver. Well, that wasn't found to be not corroborated in the report.

Now, committee said --

SCIUTTO: But we should note that the report did say she doubled down on in sworn testimony, and by the way said that Tony Ornato referenced that story two more times afterwards, right?

MOORE: She did.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

MOORE: But those are inconsistencies that could cause problems down the road in a criminal process because the burden is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And whether or not there're witnesses statements that may not be the same in one setting as another, those are things that can raise doubt for jurors. And if you think about jurors, they're your electorates. And so these issues the prosecutors are going to have to take into account and look for those strong elements of a case that he thinks he could prove in a criminal case, in a criminal prosecution.

SCIUTTO: And that's the thing, the standard for that is much higher, right, beyond a reasonable doubt.

MOORE: That is right. The standard for the prosecutor is beyond a reasonable doubt. Can he prove the case? Well, this report basically is a letter to him, the referrals are a letter. And it is an effort made to make it nonpolitical. I mean, remember that the evidence in the report was not subject to cross-examination, it was not subject to the scrutiny that a defense lawyer or group of defense lawyers might put on it if charges are brought. So, that's a very different thing, simple statements that witnesses made to a friendly questioner can certainly be challenged by somebody who is trying to take their statement apart.

[10:25:00]

SCIUTTO: No question. No cross-examination, one of the criticisms. Michael Moore, thanks so much.

MOORE: Great to be with you, Jim. Happy holidays to you.

SCIUTTO: You as well, to your family, too.

We are tracking plunging temperatures across the U.S. This is a live look at Minneapolis where it is minus nine degrees.

So, coming up next, how you could protect yourself and your home from the bitter cold.

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[10:30:00]

SCIUTTO: At the bottom of the hour, a brutal winter storm is moving across the U.S.