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Embattled GOP Rep. Santos Pushes Back On Calls To Resign; A.G. Garland Appoints Special Counsel In Biden Docs Probe; Ricky Adams, Director Of Field Operations, AL Emergency Management, Discusses "Significant Damage" In Selma After Tornado. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired January 12, 2023 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, no, they elected an MBA candidate from NYU who worked at Goldman Sachs, who lost his grandparents in the Holocaust, all fabrications. Not this person.

We don't know some basic things about his background and resume other than things like the check fraud in Brazil and the fact that he's under dueling investigations.

This is something I think Kevin McCarthy has to keep on lock. To Jessica's point, he can't afford to lose votes. But it would require a super majority of the House, so Democrats and a large number of Republicans to expel him from the conference.

Of course, that would trigger a special election. This is a district that Biden won. And there's a fear with a lot of Republicans that it would flip that seat and make them lose that very slim majority.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: So beyond the biographical lies, the question about the money and funding his campaign, this is what he said about the questions, about the $700,000 he loaned his campaign. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. GEORGE SANTOS (R-NY): It's the equity of my hard-working self. I've invested inside of me. It didn't come from Burisma. It didn't come from Ukraine, Russia, China, unlike some folks that we all know that get money from those sources.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRIFFIN: Candidly, he comes off like a con artist. That's not an answer. He's not answering where the money came from.

When he was challenged about his finance background, he said it would be too complicated for the American public to understand. I'm not going to get into explaining equities and dividends and whatever.

Just tell us, where did the money come from, what have you done, what is your experience? His voters deserve to know. Unfortunately, I think he'll continue to

be a huge headache for the conference.

I give a lot of credit to the six Republicans who have called for his resignation. I think that number will grow. We're only going to find out more.

BLACKWELL: Alyssa, thank you.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Thank you.

Attorney General Merrick Garland just appointing a special counsel to investigate President Biden's handling of classified documents. We have much more on this breaking news, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:36:18]

CAMEROTA: In a few minutes, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean- Pierre will take questions about Attorney General Merrick Garland now appointing a special counsel to investigate President Biden's handling of classified documents.

BLACKWELL: Let's bring in Arlette Saenz. She's at the White House. Let's also back CNN political commentator,, Alyssa Farah Griffin, CNN senior legal analyst, Elie Honig. And our chief law enforcement and intelligence, analyst, John Miller. with us as well.

Let's start -- if we have John -- OK, we'll hold off on John.

Elie, to you.

The question of -- I mean this is kind of a thousand-foot question here. The appointment of a special counsel versus the appointment of someone else, specifically the powers that come with this office as relates to this investigation.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: To start at 30,000 feet, if I may, how remarkable is it.

It's almost surreal that, at this moment, right, now we have a special counsel, a criminal prosecutor, investigating the sitting president and a separate special counsel investigating the former president, who is in all likelihood going to be running against the current president for the next presidency.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

HONIG: Now, that's very important to understand, what exactly is a special counsel?

The most important thing that a special counsel has is the same powers that any federal prosecutor has. You can issue subpoenas, you can investigate, you can do search warrants, you can indict, you can try cases, all the way through. What makes a special counsel different is that special counsel has a

bit more distance, separation, independence, from the attorney general. That's why you go with a special counsel.

For example, the regulations say that special counsel is not subject to the day-to-day supervision of the attorney general. The regulations say that a decision whether to charge a case or not starts with the special counsel. Ultimately, has to go to the A.G..

But the A.G. has to give great weight to whatever the special counsel wants to do. And if the attorney general overrules the special counsel, disagrees with him, then a report has to be filed with Congress.

And the last thing that really distinguishes a special counsel is, at the end, special counsel has to file some sort of written report, which we remember from the Mueller report.

So it's a federal prosecutor with a bit more independence.

CAMEROTA: John Miller, you have new information about the investigation. So just tell us what you've learned about the decision- making here.

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT & INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, the decision-making process unfolded with -- as Elie says, it starts with the U.S. attorney in Chicago, Lausch, who was a holdover for the Trump administration, specifically to continue an investigation he was conducting into political corruption in Illinois.

And he got this moved very quickly to look into it. And on January 5th, in his conversations with the attorney general, recommends that there should be a special counsel.

A, he's leaving the Department of Justice. B, there's more to be done. And he said that's the appropriate way to go.

So essentially, the decision to have a special counsel, something that's been batted back and forth over the last couple of days on the air waves and in the political discussion, was made on January 5th.

The hard part was figuring out who that person would be.

The regulations, as Elie said, have two key components among the many regulations about a special counsel.

Number one is, does the thing merit investigation? How did classified documents get into the president's garage, into an off-site office, the vice president, at a time when he wasn't serving in office merits investigation.

The second component that's critical is, are there extraordinary circumstances that would make it difficult for a regular prosecutor to do that case?

[14:40:01] And in this case, the extraordinary circumstances that the target of the investigation would be the sitting president of the United States, which brings other complications.

So those were the components where the Justice Department had to decide, do we keep this in-house, because we already have a preliminary job done by a U.S. attorney?

Or do we have to go through too many ways to explain why we didn't go with a special counsel.

A tough decision, but they made the call even before this announcement today.

BLACKWELL: Alyssa, what's likely changing from the White House perspective? This is now maybe a different footing, different posture for this administration. They're being investigated by the special counsel.

GRIFFIN: Well, of course, the Biden White House was preparing for a ton of congressional oversight so they have staffed up with attorneys and with communications teams internally to be able to respond to oversight requests.

I imagine, right now, the press secretary is working with White House counsel and the president's team to basically not offer any new information. That would be my recommendation as a comms professional who dealt with many crises in the former White House.

Keeping it tight to what they said and not introducing any few facts. I think you'll hear a lot referring to the Department of Justice and not commenting on an open investigation. There's a lot of open questions.

I want to note, when we're talking about investigations into classified information, we keep kind of hearing we need to know what's in these documents or know more about them.

The public never know in all likelihood what's in the documents other than the classification. And that is to protect national security.

So it's going to rely on this prosecutor and the officials doing the review to determine what level of threat was posed, what intent potentially was.

But we're really as the general public not going to know much other than what is determined by the DOJ.

CAMEROTA: Let's get to our White House correspondent, Arlette Saenz, who will know about this.

Arlette, people are calling into question the timeline here, and the disclosure from the White House, why the public didn't know about this sooner now that we know that the National Archives was informed by the DOJ starting on December 4th. Some Republicans point out, that was before the midterms. I don't know

anybody on either side of the aisle who would voluntarily disclose this before the midterms.

However, there were also key moments after the midterms. November 9th, 14th, 20th where they could have said something.

So what was the thought process that they're saying and how are they explaining it from the White House?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That is really one of the complicating issues in all of this is that they now have this messaging challenge where they have had this steady drip, drip, drip, drip of information that they have released that really when a lot of this played out much, much earlier and could have been disclosed earlier.

What officials here have said is they are very limited in what they can say as the Justice Department review is under way. But they're also trying to in recent statements just make clear that they are cooperating in every manner possible.

There was a statement released by the White House counsel a few moments ago where he said that they have been complying with the National Archives. They have complied with the Justice Department.

And that ultimately they believe this review will show that these documents were, quote, "inadvertently misplaced." But they're trying to stress that they understand the importance of classified information and certainly the president understands that.

But look, this is a huge headache from the White House. They are now facing this special counsel probe. It's opening up a line of attack for Republicans.

And there are questions about why they haven't released more information as this all played out behind the scenes and the type of communication or information that they have been sharing.

Yesterday, at the White House press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was very limited in what she said. She referred back to the Justice Department but really wasn't sharing much more.

As Alyssa noted, it's likely that they will hue very closely to the statements that have been released by the counsel. President Biden himself stayed very close to that, except when he made mention of the Corvette.

This will be the first time we'll be hearing from the White House press secretary in just a few moments.

CAMEROTA: All right, John Miller, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Arlette Saenz, stand by.

Obviously, we'll have more information coming out on this. [14:44:16]

BLACKWELL: We're also following breaking news out of Alabama. Tornados already being reported in several cities throughout the south. We'll speak with an official from one of those impacted communities. Stay close.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Back now to our breaking news. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate the classified documents found at President Biden's home and former office.

BLACKWELL: Of course, that's not the only special counsel investigation right now. The Justice Department appointed Jack Smith to look into former President Trump's and his allies' efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and the retention of classified documents at the Mar-a-Lago estate.

Senior data reporter, Harry Enten, is here.

We've seen several of these now. How common are these special counsel investigations?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: They seem to be coming more common, right?

Let's look through history and look at some key runs that have occurred.

The most infamous one is the Watergate special counsel during the Nixon administration. This was looking at breakthroughs at the DNC headquarters. Nixon fired the special counsel and ultimately, of course, Nixon from the presidency, he resigned.

Also, Iran-Contra is one I think a lot of folks think. The Iran-Contra independent counsel. What it looked into was essentially the selling of arms to Iran, which was prohibited, to fund the Contras in Nicaragua.

What was the result of that? It was the prosecution of several administrative -- several administration officials. Not Reagan though, although it did bring down his approval rating and hurt his presidency.

[14:50:03]

Whitewater is not necessarily one that a lot of folks might think of, especially the younger folks in our audience, but it led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

Essentially, the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, was looking at the real estate dealings of Bill and Hillary Clinton in Arkansas. And through that investigation, essentially, with the impeachment of Bill Clinton relating to the Lewinsky affair. And a more modern one, the Mueller investigation, right? Looking into Trump's 2016 links with Russia. It led to the persecution -- prosecution of several administration officials, but Trump himself was not charged.

Now, of course, all of this, I should point out, comes at a cost to the taxpayers.

So let's take a look at these costs of the special counsel investigations, $57 million for Watergates, taking into account inflation. Iran-Contra, $99 million, Whitewater, $101 million, the Mueller-Trump, $37 million.

At the end of the day, this is small drop in the bucket compared to what the federal government spends at large. The federal government has spent $907 billion this fiscal year.

It comes at a cost to the taxpayer, but, at the end of the day, the business of government has to be the business of government -- guys?

BLACKWELL: Harry Enten, thank you.

ENTEN: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: So we are expecting to hear from the White House at any moment on the appointment of that special counsel to investigate President Biden's handling of classified documents. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: We've got breaking news out of Alabama. Emergency response teams are there providing assistance in Selma after a tornado caused significant damage to the city.

Several buildings have been damaged and some injuries have been reported there due to the severe weather. In Decatur, Alabama, you can see crews here trying to clean up. Look at this. A semi turned onto its side.

Let's discuss now with the director of field operations for Alabama Emergency Management, Ricky Adams.

Mr. Adams, thank you for your time.

Let me start with life, any injuries. Can you tell me about casualties potentially that have come in, reports you're receiving?

[14:55:01]

RICKY ADAMS, DIRECTOR OF FIELD OPERATIONS, ALABAMA EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT (via telephone): We're receiving reports from across the state, several different tornado sightings. But no reports of fatalities at this time.

However, the counties and the state are still assessing the damage, and the weather service is on scene in Selma looking at that damage. BLACKWELL: Where is it worst?

ADAMS: Well, it's a relative statement, but it's worse in the Selma area and the western parts of the state right now. But again, it's still early and we're still assessing.

BLACKWELL: Yes, I know you're just -- your crews across the state and local fire rescue, they're getting to these places.

But what can you tell us about what is in Selma and the damage reports you're hearing?

ADAMS: The damage reports we have thus far from the county EMA is structural damage, trees down, power lines down, and the area is very difficult to access due to debris.

So the information is going to be a little slow coming out. But they are working house to house and area to area looking for people who may be entrapped and those who are injured.

BLACKWELL: They're going house to house now. And you're saying because of these downed trees, it's going to take some time to get to these people who are making calls? Is that right?

ADAMS: Yes. It slows the process down as they try to navigate the debris and downed tree.

BLACKWELL: How crucial is it to get to these areas before the sun goes down, before things go dark?

ADAMS: Regardless of the hour of the day, it's important to get to those areas as quickly as we can. We're in life safety mode, and that's the purpose to try to find as many people as we can.

BLACKWELL: Is the threat over?

ADAMS: No. The threat is not over for the state of Alabama. In fact, that same weather system is still moving through the central part of the state, and still moving east. So it is still a very significant weather day for us.

BLACKWELL: Ricky Adams, thank you for your time and thank you for what you are doing.

ADAMS: Thank you very much.

CAMEROTA: The White House is about to take questions on the announcement of a special counsel now investigating President Biden's handling of the classified documents. We will bring you there live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)