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Concerns Grow in Ohio Over Toxic Train; President Biden to Speak Out on Spy Balloon; Georgia Grand Jury Recommends Perjury Charges in Trump Probe; Tesla Recalls Hundreds of Thousands of Vehicles. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired February 16, 2023 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: And, if elected, Lee would likely be the only black woman in the United States Senate. Katie Porter and Adam Schiff have already announced that they will run as well.

A jarring forecast from the Congressional Budget Office that the government is going to run out of cash as soon as July if Congress doesn't raise the debt limit, the nonpartisan agency warning a default on the debt would be a disaster.

And thank you for joining INSIDE POLITICS.

Kasie Hunt picks up our coverage right now.

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Good afternoon. I'm Kasie Hunt here in Washington.

We're going to begin with breaking news. Just moments ago, we learned that Tesla is recalling -- is recalling hundreds of thousands of vehicles in order to remove the -- quote -- "full self-driving feature."

That is the beta software that lets the car drive with minimal human intervention.

Let's get straight to Gabe Cohen, who's got our latest reporting on this.

Gabe, this is a lot of cars and a big deal.

GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kasie, we're talking about potentially 363,000 Tesla vehicles that are being recalled.

Bear with me. We are just getting this recall report in that's coming from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. I want to walk you through what models we're talking about. So we're talking about the Tesla Model S, Model X, Model 3, and Model Y vehicles spanning several years, 2016 all the way up until 2023.

And, as you mentioned, all of these vehicles we're talking about are equipped with that self-driving beta software. And now Tesla is going to be giving a free software update. But, in the meantime, they're recalling these vehicles.

The federal government is saying that the system, the issue with the system, that software issue, is that the system may allow the vehicle -- according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, it could allow the vehicle to act unsafe around intersections, such as traveling straight through an intersection while in a turn-only lane, entering a stop sign-controlled intersection without coming to a complete stop, or potentially proceeding into an intersection during a steady yellow traffic signal without due caution.

And the vehicle may respond insufficiently to a change in posted speed limits. Again, this information is really just coming in. And we do know again that Tesla is going to be providing that free software update, but 363,000 vehicles, Kasie, it gives you a sense of the scale of this recall and just how many Americans this could be impacting.

And, certainly, this is a story that's been talked about for a while. Tesla's self-driving technology has been under the microscope. We saw ads during the Super Bowl that were criticizing that technology. So this is something we have been watching, Kasie.

But, again, all this information just coming in, in the last couple of minutes, this recall, 363,000 Tesla vehicles that are being looked at because of that self-driving technology, that software.

HUNT: And, Gabe, can you just refresh me?

You said at the top that -- you listed the models of Teslas that are being recalled. I think Tesla only has four models. Can you just remind me which ones they had? And 2016 to 2023, that's really the -- that's really quite a significant period of time that Tesla has been in production at all.

COHEN: Correct. Correct. This is -- we're talking about the Model S, the Model X, Model 3, and the Model Y.

I'm not on -- I'm not sure, honestly, Kasie, if that does span all of Teslas models. We will look at that. But, yes, we are talking about just a ton of Tesla vehicles right now that are being recalled.

HUNT: Right.

Well, Gabe Cohen, thanks very much. I'm sure you got a lot of work ahead of you on this story, my friend. So thank you for getting up for us quickly. We really appreciate it.

Lying under oath, that's what a grand jury is accusing some witnesses of doing in Georgia's criminal probe of Donald Trump's alleged 2020 election scheme. Key pieces of the special grand jury report were just released.

And here is the explosive takeaway -- quote -- "A majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses. The grand jury recommends that the district attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling." Now, there were no names mentioned, but we know that 75 people testified, including Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani, Senator Lindsey Graham, Michael Flynn, and John Eastman.

CNN's Manu Raju got reaction from Senator Graham just a short time ago. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Are you confident in your testimony?

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

RAJU: You haven't heard from them after that?

GRAHAM: No.

RAJU: What do you -- what's your reaction to that, that general recommendation?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: There you go.

We're covering all the angles with CNN's Sara Murray, Kristen Holmes, and Evan Perez.

Sara, let me start with you.

What are we learning from this grand jury report?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, these are really just snippets.

I think the meat of what we all really want to know is who, if anyone, they recommended for criminal charges. Of course, that is not part of what we got today. The judge made clear that he thought it was too premature, in the interest of fairness and due process, to be releasing that.

[13:05:10]

But we did get the introduction, the conclusion and these concerns about perjury. We also got a point the grand jury felt like they needed to note. They said: "We find by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election."

That's in their introduction. It's where they run through that they talked to poll workers, they talked to investigators, they talked to Georgia officials. And this is the conclusion they came to, obviously not the conclusion held by the former president and a number of his allies, but what this grand jury reached after months and months of investigating.

Now, whether anyone is going to face criminal charges, that is still the big open question, Kasie.

HUNT: Yes.

And on that question of charges, Sara, do we have any sense of what the timeline might be for something like that to actually happen?

MURRAY: It's really up to the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, when she wants to go to a regular grand jury, if she wants to go to a regular grand jury and seek indictments.

In a hearing last month, she said those decisions are imminent. Someone described that to me as, you know, imminent in a court sense, not imminent as like we're about to go run and get coffee kind of sense.

(LAUGHTER)

MURRAY: So it's anyone's guess whether that could mean sometime in the next couple of weeks or sometime in the next couple of months.

HUNT: Yes. No, as someone who's worn both political reporting and judicial reporting hats, the word imminent does seem to be very different in those two contexts.

(LAUGHTER)

HUNT: So thank you for clarifying that.

Kristen, let me go to you.

How is the former president,his camp reacting to this?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kasie, look, they were very concerned about this. They were watching it very closely.

We know advisers were worried about some kind of criminal referrals. They weren't sure what was actually going to be in these snippets. And once it was released, they spent time really going through it. Now, we did get a statement from the campaign on this report.

This is what they said: "The long-awaited, important sections of the Georgia report, which do not even mention President Trump's name, have nothing to do with the president because President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong," continues to say: "The president participated in two perfect phone calls regarding election integrity in Georgia, which he is entitled to do. In fact, as president, it was President Trump's constitutional duty to ensure election safety, security, and integrity."

So, a couple of things to note here. One, as you mentioned earlier, there were no names in this. So it's not just former President Trump's name that's not in here. There were, again, zero names. But, also, there's conflict here. He talks about election integrity. And we now know that this grand jury unanimously voted that there was

no election interference that would have merited then overturning the 2020 election in the state of Georgia. Now, in the statement, one other piece of this, which is something of a new defense that I heard recently from former President Trump and again in this statement, and he goes on to say that there were lawyers on both of these calls, and that nobody raised any objection to the fact that he was asking for these votes to be found.

It is just an interesting twist here, something that goes along the lines of Trump saying that it's freedom of speech for him to be able to say this on a phone call. We will see, again, how the rest of Trump's orbit is reacting to this news.

HUNT: Right.

And, Evan, let me bring you into this here just kind of to expand our conversation of beyond Georgia to the special counsel. There's some major developments there as well, Mark Meadows getting subpoenaed, and we're getting some new details about these secret court battles.

What do we know?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kasie.

So, look, I mean, you can see that there's been a certain acceleration, I guess, is what the word you might want to use here of Jack Smith -- Jack Smith and the Justice Department's investigation. We saw just recently that they subpoenaed Mark Meadows, trying to get documents and testimony. Of course, they also -- he also just subpoenaed the vice president of the -- the former Vice President of the United States Mike Pence and a number of other people from the White House.

And all of this, a lot of this, of course, is being -- playing out behind closed doors, in secret. We know of at least eight court battles. And that's not even including the coming ones over vice -- over the former vice president and probably Mark Meadows, who, certainly, they both are going to fight their subpoenas, all of this playing behind the scenes in a secret court battle, with the Justice Department trying to force people in the Trump world to provide testimony that they and the former president are desperately trying to block.

The only way we know about this is because we have people at the courthouse our. Our Casey Gannon sits there all day every day. And so we have been able to glean what's been going on behind the scenes.

And one of the things that we have learned is, the Justice Department is trying to say that, because of the great public interest and because these things are extraordinary, that's the reason to keep it behind the closed doors, which sort of puts -- turns transparency on its head, so to speak, right?

The bottom line, though, is that this is an investigation, the Justice Department investigation, that is accelerating. Trump is doing everything in his power to slow it down, to try to run out the clock, because he knows, and you, of course, know that the political calendar is upon us. And he's trying to figure out a way to make it impossible for the Justice Department to bring charges that could affect his run for the presidency, of course.

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HUNT: Yes. No, it's a good point. And props to the shoe leather reporting we have got going on. That's why it matters so much. We're able to find out some of these tidbits and unspool this a little bit.

Sara, Kristen, Evan, thank you all very much for that reporting.

Let's bring in CNN legal analyst Jen Rodgers and CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein, talk a little bit more about this.

Thank you both for being here.

Jen, let me start with you.

What stands out to you, in terms of the parts of this report now turning back to Georgia that were made public?

JENNIFER RODGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, unfortunately, as was said in the prior segment, we didn't get a lot of information.

I think it is notable that the grand jury unanimously found no fraud in the election. And that kind of then sets them up to say, listen, we talked to 75 witnesses, we reviewed a lot of other evidence, and it sounds like they're going to recommend charges against more than one person, not just for perjury, but we can assume for other things as well.

So we're all going to wait for that. But the perjury thing is interesting, in part because, when you think about the people who testified, the Trump allies who testified in front of the grand jury, to charge perjury, you can't just say an opinion that turns out to be wrong.

Like, a statement that "I think there was fraud in the 2020 election" is not going to be chargeable. You have to have an actual factual statement. So, that's why it's kind of interesting to see who they will actually charge.

It will have to be someone who alleges some sort of thing that is provably false as a factual matter.

HUNT: Yes.

And, I mean, Ron, we don't know at this point who they're accusing of perjury. Obviously, we don't have any names in this report. But it does seem significant to me that this is yet another group of people who are building a case against the former president's claims that this election was stolen.

I'm interested to know how you think this plays out politically, especially as we approach political -- or the campaign season here, I mean, 2024, already starting to get under way.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

HUNT: I mean, how will the president's supporters view this? And how do you think it affects the viability of a Trump challenger in a Republican primary?

BROWNSTEIN: Good questions.

I think the answer to that question is different than it was the day before the midterm election. I think, last year, there were many analysts and strategists in the Republican Party who thought that it would be a kind of a rally-around-the-flag effect, that if Trump got indicted by either Georgia or the federal government, that his supporters would be -- would kind of double down that this is proof that the deep state is conspiring against him and out to silence you by silencing him.

But I think the election may have changed that dynamic significantly. And what we have seen since November is a growing number of basically Republican elites, donors, strategists, elected officials who believe that, whatever they think about Trump personally, he cannot win again.

And I think, in that -- through that prism, Kasie, indictments might become more evidence of that kind of conclusion. And I do think that there may be parts of the party that do, in fact, rally around him. But I think it's pretty guaranteed that, if he gets indicted by one or more entities, that it will only deepen the belief among Republican leaders that he is too damaged to win again.

HUNT: Yes, that's actually a really interesting point, how much of that may have shifted when the election did not move as strongly in Republicans' favor as anybody expected in 2022.

So, I mean, to that point, Jen, on this legal question, you may have seen that statement that Kristen Holmes brought us there, again calling that infamous phone call to Brad Raffensperger to find votes -- quote, unquote -- "perfect."

How does that phone call and what occurred on it, as it -- how does it operate as a piece of criminal evidence here? And, I mean, is it -- are they further jeopardizing themselves by continuing to say in public, hey, this was a perfect call?

RODGERS: Well, certainly, any statements the former president makes is usable in a criminal trial against him. So, sure, to the extent he keeps talking, prosecutors keep recording and setting that aside for possible use someday.

But that call, the recording of that call is a terrific piece of evidence for prosecutors, because it's an hour-long call where, despite being rebuffed at every turn -- I mean, Raffensperger and others are saying, this didn't happen, there is no fraud, there's nothing to be done here within the bounds of the law -- he keeps pushing, keeps pushing and keeps pushing. So it's evidence that he's not listening, that he's being told there's

no fraud and that he cannot win legally. And he keeps telling them all he needs is for them to help him win illegally is the implication.

So, it's great evidence. And, again, they're going to keep listening to what he says and putting it away for possible use if an indictment comes down.

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HUNT: And, Ron, of course, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that this is all -- obviously, we're covering it from a national perspective.

But this is all happening in Georgia, where it's going to be covered widely both in the national and in the local and regional press. And Georgia has become a more and more important swing state. Trump lost it in 2020. Republicans have lost the Senate there.

Let's say Trump is the nominee, because he would have to obviously get -- get to a general election before this would really matter. But how much damage does this do to Donald Trump in a state that actually really matters if you want to win the White House?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, a really good point.

I mean, if you look at the -- at the swing states at the absolute fulcrum of American politics, those five states have flipped from Trump in '16 to Biden in '20 and made him, made Biden president, we saw a very clear pattern in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, where Republican candidates, particularly gubernatorial candidates, as well as Senate candidates, who are aligned with Trump just cratered in the white-collar suburbs that decided 2020.

They cratered in them again in 2022. The one exception to that pattern was Brian Kemp in Georgia. And it was largely because I think he was defined to those suburban voters as independent of Trump because of his standing up on the 2020 election.

I think the message of that is pretty clear that, in all of these places that ultimately decided the election in 2020, it's going to be an uphill fight for Trump to reclaim the voters who said no to him in '18, no to him in '20, and no to him again in '22.

I think it is a clear warning sign, I think, for Republicans about his ability to win those places. Now, that's not absolute. The economy could be bad enough and so forth. But I think the fact that Kemp did better than their nominees in those other states is a really important signal for just how toxic Trump's imprimatur was in these places that are likely to decide the next presidential result.

HUNT: And Kemp showed elites as well that you can actually win with a -- quote, unquote -- "normal Republican" that's not Donald Trump, even when Trump is on the ballot.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes. HUNT: Jen, let me -- let me talk to you for a second about the Mark Meadows DOJ subpoena briefly.

How does it suggest that the special counsel sees Meadows here? What are they looking for from him?

RODGERS: Well, he had been cooperative, if you remember, with the January 6 Committee, turning over tons of electronic messages at the beginning, and then he stopped cooperating.

So some have thought that he might actually be cooperating with DOJ. But I think this subpoena shows that he is not currently cooperating. Otherwise, they wouldn't need to subpoena him. It looks like they want him as a witness.

If they were planning to charge him with evidence that they were collecting from other witnesses and other information, then they wouldn't call into the grand jury. DOJ rarely brings targets to the grand jury. So it seems to me that he's not cooperating, but they're looking to bring him into the grand jury. They will likely have to immunize him because he will probably take the Fifth.

But they want his testimony more than they want to charge him. So I think they're planning for him to be a central component of whatever case they end up bringing.

HUNT: Very interesting.

All right, Jen Rodgers, Ron Brownstein, thank you both very much for being part of our discussion today. I really appreciate your time.

And just minutes from now, at the top of the hour, President Biden will speak about the objects recently shot down by U.S. fighter jets.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond joins us now.

Jeremy, what are we learning about this?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right.

We're expecting President Biden to deliver remarks within the next 40 minutes or so, at 2:00 p.m. He is expected to for the first time in a more formal setting address this issue of that Chinese spy balloon that the U.S. shot down and also those three unidentified objects that were shot down between Friday and Sunday.

This will be the first time that we hear from the president's comprehensively on this matter. And it comes after several days of discussions among White House aides about the possibility and the merits of the president speaking on this matter publicly or not.

And what has really changed over the last couple of days to get White House aides to the point where the president is in fact going to speak on this now is two things. First of all, there has been growing calls from both members of Congress on both sides of the aisle for the president to come out and address the American public to try and quell the concerns that have rightfully emerged over the weekend after we saw all of these objects being downed.

And secondly is also the notion that U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly confident that those three unidentified objects that were shot down between Friday and Sunday, that they were likely benign or for commercial purposes.

They have grown increasingly confident in that assessment. And so now we're at a point where the president can come out and talk about that. And he will also likely talk about this interagency effort that he has tasked the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, with launching, which is set to identify how the U.S. responds to these types of aerial phenomenon going forward.

[13:20:08]

The U.S. is also expected to release some new protocols on how they will treat these objects, particularly like those that were flying within commercial airspace, right? Unlike that Chinese spy balloon, which was flying at some 60,000 feet, way above where commercial airliners would go, these last three objects were in that area of 20,000 to 30,000 feet, where you might see some issues with commercial flights.

HUNT: Right.

And on another topic, the president today went to have his annual physical exam. He just returned to the White House in the last hour or so. Do you know when we could get some results from that and if what we see will actually tell us anything?

DIAMOND: Yes, we are expecting to see some kind of summary from the president's physician at some point this afternoon.

So far, we just heard the White House press secretary, Karine Jean- Pierre, come out and say that it was fairly straightforward, but she didn't want to get ahead of what the president's physician is going to say about this. But he did undergo a battery of tests at Walter Reed National Medical Center this morning.

He spent several hours there getting these various tests done. We know that he -- it does not appear that he was put under anesthesia at any point. We know that, previously, if there is some kind of colonoscopy, for example, that the vice president is temporarily empowered. That does not appear to have happened this time.

But, of course, this comes as President Biden is preparing for his potential reelection campaign and questions about his age are sure to be a central focus. He is, of course, the oldest sitting president in U.S. history. And that's certainly something that is on the president's mind and on, of course, the minds of voters as well as we approach that 2024 campaign -- Kasie.

HUNT: All right, Jeremy Diamond, thanks very much for your reporting. Really appreciate it.

The outrage and worries are growing in Eastern Ohio. Residents are demanding more answers and more help after the toxic train disaster has upended their lives. The EPA is set to talk about it later on this hour. We're going to bring that to you live.

Plus, chilling new details about the Michigan State University shooter. What we're learning about his weapons and his list of targets.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:26:33]

HUNT: Right now, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency is at the site of the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. He is looking into Norfolk Southern's response to the disaster and is set to hold a news conference later on this hour.

Also today, Ohio's governor is asking for federal help with the recovery effort. Last night, rail company officials did not show up at a town hall meeting over safety concerns. OK. Angry residents did show up, of course. They're worried that their town isn't safe, and they want answers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We don't know what we're facing. We find it very hard to believe that there is no particulate matter in the air that can cause us harm after practically an atom bomb was released over our small community.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: CNN's Jason Carroll was at that meeting, unlike those Norfolk Southern representatives.

Jason, what's the latest?

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, first of all, the head of the EPA, Michael Regan, made it very clear that he was disappointed that representatives from Norfolk Southern did not show up last night, and he made it very clear that they would be held accountable.

Last night, when we were there, Kasie, we heard from a number of residents who still have a lot of unanswered questions. They want to know if there are going to be people out here who are going to be able to test them for medical reasons maybe five or six years, maybe 10 years from now.

They want to know, they want assurances that the air and the water is safe. And they also want to know how much longer the EPA intends to be here. Will they stick it out? Will they stay through the course? Well, I put that question to the EPA administrator just a short while ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MICHAEL REGAN, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ADMINISTRATOR: We will be here for as long as it takes to see this process through.

I want to assure the people of East...

CARROLL: I just want to say, when you say as long as it takes, I think the question is long term.

Is someone going to be here a year from now, two years from now to come back, test the water, test the soil?

REGAN: I'm very clear when I say as long as it takes. We will go through this process with the citizens of East Palestine for as long as it takes. The federal government will be here for as long as it takes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: Ohio's governor, Kasie, did speak with the White House this morning about the need for more federal help.

According to his office, they requested assistance from the Department of Health, as well as the CDC, saying that they need some of those people from the CDC on the ground here immediately to try to meet with people who say that they are having symptoms as a result of what has happened here.

And I also want to go over just a little bit more here some new information that we're getting in from the Ohio governor's office. According to the office, they say that they have tested 474 homes, the air quality inside those homes. And, initially, 75 of those homes had elevated levels of some of the toxins that were released as a result of the train derailment.

But then they said further testing showed them that those contaminants were not present. So, once again, officials out here saying that the air quality is safe, that the municipal water quality is safe, the residents not assured of that -- Kasie.

HUNT: Yes.

Can I just follow up with you on the question about the water? Because there had been some questions yesterday, where people were warned, like, hey, drink bottled water anyway just to be sure while we figure this out.

Obviously, then there are other questions about water use like when you take a shower, et cetera.

[13:30:00]