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Snowstorm Aftermath; U.S. Issues COVID Test Requirements For Travelers From China; Russia Unleashes Missile Strikes on Ukraine; New January 6 Committee Transcripts Released. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired December 29, 2022 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:25]

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: Hello. Good afternoon. I'm Abby Phillip here in Washington.

And we begin today with the House January 6 Committee dropping a brand-new batch of key testimony. And, for the first time, we are now seeing interview transcripts from 19 additional witnesses. And they include some of the closest people inside former President Trump's inner circle, his son Donald Trump, Jr., former FOX News anchor Kimberly Guilfoyle, as well as a handful of his former spokespeople and lawyers.

So let's just get right to CNN's Sara Murray, who has been looking through all of these documents.

Sara, thousands of pages of transcripts, some of this, we have seen through the January 6 Committee hearings. And you have been reading through Donald Trump Jr.'s transcripts.

What are you finding in there?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

This was obviously interesting just because he's the former president's son, right, proximity to the former president. And they're asking him, of course, about what was happening as the riot unfolded on January 6. And they're reading back to him text messages he exchanged with Mark Meadows.

At one point, Don Jr. tells Mark Meadows, the former president, Donald Trump, his dad, has got to condemn this. And then he has says an expletive. So the committee is asking him, you said he's got to condemn it. What are you talking about? What did he have to condemn?

And, again, Don Jr. says: "The violence that's going on. Again, I think I made it pretty clear in my speech we can do this peacefully. Use your First Amendment rights, do it that way. But violence has no place in this situation."

And, Abby, of course, we know from our previous reporting on the Mark Meadows' texts how Meadows and others at the White House were just getting inundated from people, including the former president's kids, trying to get Donald Trump to call off the masses. And, in this transcript, Donald Trump Jr. points out that he was often

in contact with other White House aides. He said, when he tried to reach his dad at the White House, he would often get him through the White House operator, because, famously, his father doesn't text, his father doesn't use e-mails. This is something that has stymied a number of investigators who have looked into Donald Trump, his sort of lack of a paper trail.

And you get some more insight into it into these transcripts. They also asked Donald Trump Jr. a lot about the fund-raising efforts around the election. We saw the committee make a lot of how much money Donald Trump raised on these baseless claims of election fraud.

And Donald Trump Jr. sort of says, you could send out things under my name, as long as they were approved by legal. That was sort of the tacit agreement. He says he would occasionally be in touch with big- dollar donors, but said dialing for donors was his idea of hell -- Abby.

PHILLIP: Yes, a lot of interesting things, a lot of "I don't know"s and "I don't recall"s in these transcripts as well.

MURRAY: Yes.

PHILLIP: Sara Murray, thank you.

Let's discuss now with former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti and CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein.

So, Renato, obviously, in these transcripts, you're seeing an effort, especially as we get closer into Trump's inner circle, to really try to not say definitively whether or not a lot of things happened. But one thing that has kind of struck out in many of the transcripts is the role of Mark Meadows, who was the chief of staff at the time.

He was at the heart of a lot of this, because he was the person physically closest to the president. We also learned yesterday Cassidy Hutchinson saw him throwing papers into a fireplace and burning them.

From your perspective, what's next here for Mark Meadows? If you're -- if you're the special counsel looking into all of this, is there more that you want to learn from him? And will they be able to get those answers?

RENATO MARIOTTI, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: It's a great question.

I think that the challenge for Jack Smith is going to be the Fifth Amendment. If I was representing Mark Meadows, I would counsel him to take the Fifth and not testify whatsoever unless he received immunity.

I think that the question is really going to be for Jack Smith, does he have enough evidence to go to Meadows' defense counsel, who's a very, very fine criminal defense attorney, and say, I'm going to indict your client if he does not cooperate?

I think that's really the question here. Otherwise, the alternative would be to immunize Meadows in order to get his testimony against Trump, which is dangerous, because Meadows may try to cover for Trump.

I will say, by the way, that I think it is apparent -- you're absolutely right, Abby -- from reading these transcripts how much Meadows was a key here. He was in many ways a funnel or a bottleneck for so many people to reach Trump that day.

PHILLIP: And, Ron, I want to just stay on Don Jr. for a second and this issue of how he was able to or not able to get to his father is.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

[13:05:00]

PHILLIP: In these transcripts, it makes it very clear that Don Jr. thought it was imperative for his father to go some -- go to the Oval Office and say something, to do something.

But he couldn't get through to Trump himself. What do you make of that, just the fact that, even for the former president's family, they weren't able to get this message through to him at such a critical moment?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, to Renato's first point, I mean, it is about the centrality of the role of Mark Meadows and how he was really the hub, I think, or the funnel for so, so much of this, including the efforts to communicate with him, the president, on that day.

Can I focus, Abby, though, on another -- just following up on another aspect of the Trump Jr. deposition that I think is really critical? Because, as you note, I mean, I don't know, I don't recall, I don't remember, if you take those words out, you might reduce it from 105 pages to five.

But there is one critical thing, there is one critical thing that he acknowledges. And in the report, the first mention of the idea of having state -- Republican-controlled state legislators throw out the vote in their state and simply substitute Donald Trump electors is from Donald Trump Jr. to Mark Meadows two days after the election.

It's somewhere around page 260 of the report. And in this deposition, he's asked, where did he get that idea? And he acknowledges that it was -- quote -- "a cut and paste" from someone else, that he did not develop this himself. But he says: I don't remember who gave me the idea initially.

I'm guessing that, as they investigate the fake electors scheme, and the broader conspiracy to obstruct the official proceeding, that that is something that the special counsel is going to want to press Donald Trump Jr. on, rather than just simply, I don't remember.

He is saying that that idea, which I think is the first time it appears in the record of that suggestion, and Meadows responds, "We are already working on it."

PHILLIP: Yes.

BROWNSTEIN: So I think this is important insight into the genesis of the fake electors scheme.

PHILLIP: Renato, I wonder what you make of that, and also the -- this tactic that you see repeatedly in these transcripts from Don Jr., from others, Kimberly Guilfoyle, close to the former president, to try to suggest that they just don't remember things that are there.

How far does that go when you're not a January 6 Committee, but you're a federal investigator probing some of these questions?

MARIOTTI: Well, it's not uncommon, Abby, for witnesses to take that approach when there's a criminal investigation, because it can be hard to disprove what you can or can't remember. And so it's hard to charge someone with lying for saying that they don't recall or they don't remember something.

So that's why they're doing it. I think one thing that struck me with Don Jr. is, he sometimes takes it a step further, and he tries to distance himself from his father, which I thought was very interesting. He couldn't reach his father directly. That's why he went to Meadows. He's not really involved. As you mentioned a moment ago, he's just the fund-raising guy.

Like, he makes himself seem like he's really very distant, whereas, in other media, in other times, if you read his Twitter feed or if you're looking -- getting his fund-raising e-mails, which occasionally I do, he sounds like he's hand in glove with Donald Trump, his father, like they're talking constantly and working together, and he's the heir apparent.

So I think it's interesting. It's really interesting when you compare it to some of the approaches that other witnesses took, like Stephen Miller, who kept putting his arms around Donald Trump and was saying how glorious he was and really stuck with the party line.

I think it shows that Don Jr. really saw some potential culpability for himself here.

PHILLIP: And, Ron, speaking of Stephen Miller, there was another key quote in Miller's deposition.

He was asked about this Ellipse speech that happened on January 6, and Miller told the investigators on the committee that it is a -- quote -- "radical impossibility and extreme and outlandish" to say that Trump wanted anything but -- quote -- "peace and harmony" on January 6.

Just your reaction on its face to that statement from Stephen Miller.

BROWNSTEIN: Well, look, Stephen Miller is the purified essence of Trumpism embodied in an individual.

We continue to see it in the causes that he has pushed, the group that he was associated with that had those openly racist ads during the baseball playoffs about the border and so forth. And, look, it's just a reminder that he -- there is a substantial portion of the Republican Party still that is going to defend Donald Trump to the last -- the last yard, even after the evidence, as we have talked about before, about what happened in this election in swing states, the candidates who were essentially running under his umbrella.

I look at Stephen Miller's deposition just as an indication of how hard it is going to be from the Republican Party to simply put Donald Trump in the rearview mirror, no matter how many fund raisers and other party strategists want to do so. There is a core that is deeply invested in his polarizing and divisive brand of politics.

[13:10:05]

And Miller is a reflection of that.

PHILLIP: Renato, one of the new pieces of information that we're getting is from actually the transcript of Christina Bobb, a Trump lawyer who's relaying to the committee in her testimony some -- some conversations that she had with Senator Lindsey Graham, who, as you know, is a close ally of former President Trump's.

And this seems to kind of speak to a desire on the part of so many people around Trump to find fraud where there was none. Christina Bobb says that Lindsey Graham tells her to: "Just give me five dead voters. Give me" -- she -- I'm sorry -- she -- that Graham told Meadows this.

But she told the committee: "Give me five dead voters. Find an example of illegals voting. Give me a small snapshot," he says, "of anything that he can take and champion in order to find -- in order to demonstrate evidence of fraud."

And, as we know, there was no evidence of fraud. But what does it tell you that someone like a sitting Senator Lindsey Graham was basically begging for examples of anything that would prove these baseless claims that the election was stolen?

MARIOTTI: Yes, it certainly makes it look like, which is something I think we already knew, is that he was on a team Trump and was willing to do what he could to try to help Trump create enough of a circus around the electoral results to try to overturn the results of the election.

And so one thing that I find interesting, just looking at this from a -- as a former prosecutor and a current defense attorney, is, how does this line up with what he told the Fulton County prosecutor?

There, he's on -- supposedly, he's having phone calls with Georgia trying to influence things over there, and he's probably trying to take the tack that Don Jr. was, right? I don't remember much. I'm super away from this. I wasn't really hands-on.

And what does Bobb appear -- make it look like? The exact opposite. Very eager to get involved (AUDIO GAP) on behalf of Donald Trump.

PHILLIP: Renato Mariotti and Ron Brownstein, thank you both so much for all of that analysis.

And now on to Ukraine for us, where Russia has unleashed a massive wave of missile strikes. Ukraine says that this scene has played out all across the country, as soldiers shoot down dozens of Russian rockets and at least 11 drones. Ukrainian officials say that it is one of the largest missile barrages since the war began and more than -- more than 10 months ago, and that Russia is targeting intentionally critical infrastructure.

Massive power outages now blanket several regions of that country.

CNN's Ben Wedeman joins us now from Kyiv.

Ben, what are you seeing in the capital right now after quite a last few hours that they have had?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, certainly, in the morning, we heard several large explosions here in Central Kyiv.

And they're -- basically, this was a scene played out across the country, from the far east, to the far west, from the north, to the south. Here in Kyiv, according to the mayor, there were 16 missiles fired in the direction of the capital.

They were all intercepted. However, in the process of intercepting those missiles, debris fell to the ground, hitting, for instance, two residential areas. We went to both of them. In one of them, a 14-year- old girl was injured, as well as her mother and a man nearby. And then, even though this was just debris falling from the sky, there's massive destruction in those areas.

In another home we went to, we found a 79-year-old man, Leonin, walking around the street in his bathrobe, something in a daze. His house was almost hit. Just about a yard from his house, there's a huge crater where another piece of debris hit. Both he and his adult son escaped with barely scratches.

But in other parts of the country, people were not so fortunate. In the city of Kharkiv, where four missiles actually did hit what Ukrainian officials are calling critical infrastructure, two people were killed. And another person was killed in the Donetsk region. Here in Kyiv, 40 percent of the city is without electricity. In the Western city of Lviv, 90 percent of the city is without power.

Nonetheless, the Ukrainians did manage to shoot down 54 of the 69 missiles struck. So, their attitude at the end of the day is that all's well that ends well -- Abby.

[13:15:03]

PHILLIP: Ben Wedeman, thank you so much for that report.

And coming up next for us: attempting to fight a startling new COVID surge. Why the U.S. is requiring negative tests for travelers arriving from China and how China is responding now.

Plus, incredible pictures from just outside of Buffalo, homes covered in ice after that massive winter storm. And now officials are warning that warmer weather could be bringing another disaster.

And CNN's KFILE uncovers even more lies from incoming Republican Congressman George Santos.

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[13:20:15]

PHILLIP: The White House is taking new action in response to China's surge in COVID cases.

Starting next week, all passengers traveling from China must provide a negative COVID test 48 hours before boarding a plane. And here's why. Earlier in the week, in Italy, a flight from China landed in Milan with nearly half, half of the passengers testing positive.

And there are some unconfirmed reports that as many as 250 million people in China have had COVID just in the first 20 days of this month.

CNN's Kevin Liptak is traveling with President Biden in St. Croix, and Paula Hancocks is in Seoul, South Korea.

Kevin, I want to start with you.

Tell us more about what prompted the administration to take this step so quickly.

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN WHITE HOUSE PRODUCER: Well, this is really about what U.S. officials say is a lack of transparency coming from Beijing amid this latest COVID surge.

And, of course, American officials are alarmed about the numbers themselves. But perhaps more concerning is the lack of genomic sequencing data from the ground in China that could help detect whether a new variant or new variants are spreading. And so that is what led to these rules that were announced yesterday.

As you said, all travelers coming from China to the United States will have to provide a negative COVID test before they board their plane. It can be either a PCR test, or it can be an at-home antigen test that's conducted through a telehealth service basically on a Webcam. It will apply to all passengers who are over the age of 2, and it will go into effect on January 5.

The White House, the CDC wanted to give the airlines some time to get this infrastructure in place. And what a health officials said yesterday is they acknowledged this isn't necessarily going to prevent COVID cases coming from China to the United States. And, of course, we have been down this road before.

At the very beginning of the pandemic, there were these strict travel bans in place on China and other countries, and it didn't necessarily prevent the virus from leaving China. But what they do say is that they hope that this can help improve the genomic testing once travelers potentially get to the United States, help detect these variants, if there are new variants, and help prevent them from spreading in the United States.

Now, this is all -- speaks to the growing mistrust between Washington and Beijing. And, of course, that's true in so many areas, the economy, security, but it's also true and COVID. And you have heard that really since the beginning of the pandemic. U.S. officials say that China hasn't necessarily been forthcoming with details about the origins of COVID.

U.S. officials said just this week that China continues to reject American offers to provide vaccines for Chinese citizens. U.S. officials don't have a deadline for when these new rules might lift. They say they want to get a better handle of the situation the ground there in China -- Abby.

PHILLIP: And, Paula, as Kevin just said, this is a tense moment for U.S.-China relations.

But it's not just the United States. Other countries are putting in similar restrictions. How is China responding?

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Abby, they actually responded even before the U.S. officially announced that they were putting these restrictions in place, because they knew that it was coming.

We had a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs basically saying: "All parties need to work together scientifically against the epidemic to ensure the safe movement of people between countries."

Now, of course, the irony isn't lost on anybody that China is the country which has really had one of the most stringent and long- lasting restrictions, this zero COVID policy, when it comes to the pandemic than any other country in the world. Also, we heard from the spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry that the COVID situation the whole remains predictable and under control.

That doesn't tally with what we have been seeing on the ground, our teams there, and what we have been hearing also from some media within China itself. They have been pointing out that the hospitalizations are significant, that hospitals are under strain, and even things as basic as fever medication is very difficult to come by -- Abby.

PHILLIP: Predictable and under control, definitely not what it seems like is happening right now.

Paula Hancocks and Kevin Liptak, both of you, thank you.

And here at home, there's some good news for Southwest passengers. The company is informing customers by e-mail that it expects to be flying a full schedule starting tomorrow, Friday. And this comes after Southwest canceled thousands of flights over the last week, including 2,300 flights just today.

[13:25:00]

The airline has not provided information its recovery efforts or plans for those affected by the massive disruptions. The winter storm that initially caused all this travel chaos affected more than just Southwest passengers.

Patrick Holland missed out on a heart transplant last week. After receiving a call that there was a donor heart in Seattle, he raced to the airport in Alaska. And he only had a short window of time to get to the medical center. And the weather just kept getting worse.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PATRICK HOLLAND, PROSPECTIVE HEART TRANSPLANT PATIENT: But I realized, in Anchorage at the time, there was also a storm going on. I mean, it was crazy to watch it from out the windows.

And then the second flight got canceled, and then the third flight got canceled. And then I knew -- at this point, I knew. I told my brother. I said, the next phone call is not going to be good. And then just as I was calling her, she was calling me back to tell me that they were going to give the heart to somebody else.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Just tragic.

The 56-year-old added that the staff of Alaska Airlines jumped through hoops to try to help him.

And now to Erie County, New York, where officials just updated the death toll there to 39, after that brutal blizzard earlier this week, and as roads. And Buffalo reopen and the first responders conduct these door-to-door wellness checks, there is concern that number will rise.

Earlier today on CNN, Buffalo's mayor defended the city's response to the crisis. And that was after the Erie County executive called it inadequate.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

BYRON BROWN, MAYOR OF BUFFALO, NEW YORK: He's wrong. People have operated since Friday, working around the clock on little sleep.

And I'm not going to focus on negativity. I'm going to focus on positivity and working together. That's what the residents demands of us.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

PHILLIP: CNN's national correspondent, Athena Jones, is on the ground in Buffalo.

Athena, there was just a press conference there in Buffalo. What are we learning? What's the latest?

ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Abby. Well, we're learning that the death toll is rising. The Erie County

medical examiner has now confirmed 39 deaths that they're attributing to the blizzard. But Erie County executive Mark Poloncarz has made it very, very clear that number is likely to rise. This is something we have been warned about over the last few days as more bodies are uncovered and discovered through these wellness checks.

He said that there are additional bodies that have been found, but they need to be examined. They need to be autopsied to figure out whether they can be attributed to the blizzard itself. And, now, that 39 number, that's countywide; 31 of those deaths occurred here in the city of Buffalo.

And, as you mentioned, Mayor Brown responded to Mark Poloncarz's criticism from last night, very public criticism. The county executive had said that the mayor wasn't doing enough to coordinate with the county and with nearby municipalities. Well, he made a point of doing something that we don't often see from politicians. He apologized not once, but not twice, but several times at the top of this press conference, saying that, look, these deaths are absolutely heartbreaking. He said, I lost my focus.

He apologized the community for doing that. He said it's been a lot of work, a lot of effort, a lot of hours and not a lot of sleep, and that, last night, he called Mayor Brown to discuss this with him, texted with him. He hasn't -- he hadn't reached him yet as of that press conference an hour or so ago. But he looks forward to talking with him about this. And he apologized once again for losing his focus.

So, we're unlikely to hear more criticism and more of that back-and- forth blame game, at least for the next day or two. One bit of good news that was shared is that the flooding that we have been hearing about, the concerns about flooding, those have diminished somewhat. They now don't expect -- they expect to see some waterways crest, but not cause any sort of major flooding.

Still, just in case, Governor Kathy Hochul has already ordered state agencies to dispatch resources, personnel, equipment to Western New York to be in place just in case that bad flooding does materialize. We're talking about 800,000 sandbags, more than 300 generators and pumps to deal with that.

And so that at least is already in place ahead of time. Meanwhile, the driving ban is lifted. City Hall behind me is open. The courthouse right next to it as open, as are Erie County offices. And the snow removal continues, but just more signs of this city beginning to get back to normal.

But, again, we do expect that death toll to continue to rise -- Abby.

PHILLIP: And, hopefully, they do get relief on that flooding front.

Athena Jones, thank you.

And up next for us: new lies from incoming Republican Congressman George Santos, and more silence from the Republican leaders here in Washington.

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