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Distinguished CNN Investigative Reporter, Drew Griffin, Dies; El Paso Declares State of Emergency Ahead of Title 42 Lifting; Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired December 19, 2022 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: So just real quick before I let you go, because I usually light my menorah every year. I didn't get to because I'm traveling. So tomorrow I can start right.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICS WRITER AND ANALYST: Yes.

LEMON: And tonight once I get home.

ENTEN: You can start, and you can have me over and we can light the menorah together.

LEMON: All right, thank you, Harry. Glad you cleared that up. I don't care what the polling shows.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: And CNN THIS MORNING continues right now.

LEMON: Good morning, everyone. So glad that you can wake up with us. Welcome to CNN THIS MORNING. Our Poppy Harlow is off this morning. Hopefully she is in a warm beach somewhere enjoying her time off. Kaitlan and I are live for you in Washington, D.C., right ahead of the January 6th committee's final public meeting.

So we're going to catch you up on the five big stories on CNN this morning.

In just a few hours the January 6th Committee is set to make announcements about criminal referrals to the Justice Department. The referrals would recommend that the Department of Justice investigate and look at charging some individuals for their role in the insurrection. We're going to talk about who those people are in just a moment.

COLLINS: Also, the Trump-era immigration policy known as Title 42 that allows officials to turn away migrants at the U.S. southern border is set to expire this week. The administration and border officials are now bracing for a surge and people trying to cross into the U.S. as more Border Patrol agents have been deployed and more government officials hired to process the migrants.

LEMON: The question is, will he or won't he. Elon Musk asking Twitter users if he should step down as CEO, and they said yes. More than 17 million voted in this poll that Musk tweeted out last night. That was probably his goal as well, to get as many people engaged as possible. Nearly 58 percent of those users voted yes, that he should step down. Musk said that he will abide by the results. He has not responded this morning.

COLLINS: Also, five people were killed in a shooting at a condo in Toronto last night. Another person who was shot was taken to the hospital in serious condition as police say that the male gunman was shot and killed by an officer during a confrontation. It's not clear what the motive was and police have not shared what led up to the shooting.

LEMON: And 31 crew members are still missing after a Thai Navy ship sinks in the Gulf of Mexico. Of the 106 crew members on board, 75 have been rescued. Officials say strong winds pushed the ship to tilt over. Water flowed into the ship's electrical system, causing it to shut down.

COLLINS: But this morning, the main story, the House January 6th Committee holding its final public meeting to consider at least three criminal referrals against former President Trump. The panel is expected to vote on asking the Justice Department to pursue charges including insight or insisting in an insurrection, obstructing an official proceeding, and conspiracy to defraud the government. CNN's Katelyn Polantz joins us now. What are we expecting today in addition to these referrals?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: We are expecting a hearing the final moment that the committee has to present all of its findings. And we know since we saw all of those hearings over the summer and into the beginning of the fall, the committee continued its work. They brought more people in, they got access to more and more text messages. So they've been doing a lot. We're waiting the see if they have anything new.

But then there's that big moment of what they do with these possible criminal referrals that they are expecting to want to ask the Justice Department to pursue. We already know where the committee stands on a lot of this. They showed their cards in federal court even previously when they were pursuing John Eastman's emails, that election attorney for Donald Trump. And they basically said quite clearly that they believed that Donald Trump was working on a conspiracy to defraud the United States, that's sort of that disinformation campaign, and then obstruction of a congressional proceeding. That's the sort of stuff where the people around Trump, Trump himself, would have been trying to put pressure on Mike Pence.

Insurrection, of course, that would be a big, a new thing if the committee chose to make a criminal referral on that. That we would expect to see them trying to connect Trump to the rioters themselves, the people that broke into Congress. Remember this is Congress investigating themselves. So they probably have a lot to say as a body about what it felt like to be attacked.

COLLINS: And so we're waiting for the criminal referrals. Obviously, it doesn't mean the Justice Department has to act on those. They'll make their own decisions. But we're also just going to get a ton of information because they say the Justice Department doesn't even have this information. We'll get the transcripts of Ginni Thomas, Ivanka Trump, Bill Barr, all of these people who went and testified behind closed doors.

POLANTZ: We'll see if we get those transcripts, exactly when we're going to be seeing them. But you're right, there are a lot of things that the committee has been doing that maybe the criminal investigation didn't get into yet.

And the other thing that's so different about this is that we're going sort of backwards. There was the impeachment right after the riot of Donald Trump, those proceedings where he was acquitted by the Senate.

[08:05:01]

And now we have a congressional proceeding that did a lot of work, really dug in and is going to be releasing their report, and the Justice Department is going to continue on. So we don't actually know what point right now the Justice Department is in their investigation. We know they're looking at many of the same things. They're talking to many of the same people, but they either may be taking cues from the committee, or we as the American public may be learning things that become important later on.

COLLINS: Thanks Katelyn.

LEMON: So let's bring in now CNN's chief political analyst Gloria Borger and CNN's senior legal analyst, correspondent Paula Reid. Good morning to both of you. Let's talk about the legal aspect of this, right because these are recommendations. We're going to hear exactly why they're recommending, doesn't necessarily have any teeth legally, but it is a strong suggestion, we should say, to the Department of Justice.

PAULA REID, CNN SENIOR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: That's a great way to describe it, a strong suggestion. This is really symbolic. We know the Justice Department is already investigating former President Trump and his associates for their role in January 6th and, of course, appointed a special counsel to take over that investigation. And I guess you could say this applies additional political pressure. But Merrick Garland will tell you, and I think at this point Jack Smith will, too, they have plenty of political pressure when it comes to these Trump related investigations.

Speaking to attorneys for the former president, they're not terribly concerned about this particular investigation. They believe even if he is charged related to this investigation, they believe that they could put on a successful defense.

LEMON: Did you say political pressure on Jack Smith?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, there's all kinds of pressure on Jack Smith. Let's be real about it. He's been brought into something really high profile. And the country has -- Trump supporters believe he's political, and the rest of the country wants to see what he's going to do. Donald Trump is running for president, and he believes that in some way, and I think he's wrong about this, that this is going to insulate him from whatever the Justice Department may or may not do.

I think what's going to happen today is sort of historically significant and meaningful. Just think about it. Take a step back. This committee after months and months of voluminous research, interviewing 1,000 witnesses or more, is telling the United States public that we believe we need to criminally refer a former president for trying to obstruct a free and fair election, effectively orchestrating a coup. And that is remarkable when you think about it. He was trying to keep himself in office. And it has already affected the public, I believe, to a certain degree. It's already affected Republicans, I believe, to a certain degree when you look at our polling.

COLLINS: And Katelyn, also I think something when we talk about the significance of this, but also what the criminal referrals mean, there was the federal judge who said it was more likely than not that Trump and Eastman have committed a crime here. That's significant in the scope of viewing the committee's work, too.

POLANTZ: Right. And the thing that I'm always thinking about as somebody who is covering the courts, we're watching this in federal court. But that's on paper. And much of the American people don't get to see that in the same real way where you're seeing people like Bill Barr on camera commenting about what he knew versus what Trump was saying. You're seeing people that the committee captured --

COLLINS: His own daughter.

POLANTZ: Yes. And so the way that they're presenting this is just so different than we've seen even from Congress in the past, the way they conduct hearings. And it certainly isn't the way that the Justice Department is able to spell out a case if they do end upbringing a case like this.

LEMON: Gloria, listen, the timing is crucial, right, because there's going to be a changing of the guard soon. And if they don't get this done, then what are the odds that it's going to continue into the next --

BORGER: There are no odds. The Republicans are going to control the House and the tables are going to turn. And they're going to say we're going to want to subpoena you Democrats to find out how you mishandled this committee. In the meantime, there's a handful of Republicans who are subpoenaed who never showed up. And today they're probably going to tell us what they're going to do about those Republicans who never showed up to testify. Are they going to criminally refer them? Are they going to send them to the ethics committee? What are they going to do about them, because they know they're going to be subpoenaed at one time or another themselves.

LEMON: So the whole thing really is what are the odds. What are the odds. Lawmaker -- Republican lawmaker after lawmaker, former Republican lawmakers after lawmakers will say I think there's a strong chance, I think he should be indicted, meaning the former president. But then do you think there's the political and legal appetite in Washington to actually indict a former president of the United States?

REID: That's a political question. Legally speaking, though, I will say that Merrick Garland and Jack Smith, they're not going to weigh the political wins here. The whole reason that they have Jack Smith is whatever decision he makes, whichever facts -- exactly, special counsel -- he can take the blowback one way or the other.

[08:10:10]

If you look at Merrick Garland's career historically, this is not a political animal. He is a judge, he's the consummate attorney. He's going to look at the facts now. Jack Smith is going to look at those same facts and they will make that decision regardless of where the political winds are. The political ramifications, those will happen likely on the campaign trail, not necessarily in Jack Smith's office, wherever he is sitting right now in Europe.

BORGER: I'm not a lawyer here, because I think it depends on what they can prove. Can they prove insurrection? That's really tough. Can they prove obstruction of a congressional proceeding?

COLLINS: It's important to view it, to Don's point, also to view it through what all is happening to Trump this week. This is not the only thing. He's got all these other investigations that we've been covering. Lawmakers have his tax returns. All of that when we look at a broader scope, what does a week like this mean for someone like Trump who is not just a former president but he's also running again.

POLANTZ: It really puts the focus on him. I believe the Ways and Means Committee is also planning to meet this week. They have access to several years of his tax returns when he was in office. So Congress is going to put the spotlight. But whatever they're doing right now, that continues on. Just last week there were arguments in the federal court system about whether or not he has absolute immunity over the Capitol riot on a civil side of things. And remember, at the end of the impeachment proceedings I believe it was Mitch McConnell who was saying, well, maybe there's a way he can have civil liability. So there's a lot of things that continue on, a lot of questions where Trump is still going to be facing legal issues, whether it's a charge or not.

LEMON: To all that he's going to say it's a political witch hunt.

BORGER: I'm the victim. I'm the victim.

LEMON: I knew you were going to say that.

BORGER: Did you know that?

LEMON: Thank you all, appreciate it.

COLLINS: Also this morning, more than half of the 17.5 million people who voted in Elon's poll say yes, he should step down from running the site. Earlier Musk faced serious backlash claiming abruptly suspended several journalists, including CNN's Donie O'Sullivan, claiming they doxed him by posted links to an account that shared information about his private plane. Then Twitter implemented a new policy to prevent users from sharing links and user names from other social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter competitor Mastodon. Less than 24 hours later, there was an about-face, a big one, of course, as Twitter deleted that policy.

Before he asked his Twitter policies to decide his future, which he does say he will abide by, Musk was spotted at the World Cup with Jared Kushner. Here to talk about all of this and the results of this is CNN's media analyst and "Axios" reporter Sara Fischer. Sara, what do you think about this, given that it does say he should step down, he says he will abide by it. Do you think he actually will?

SARA FISCHER, CNN MEDIA ANALYST: I do think he will for two reasons. One, Kaitlan, he's been suggesting for a while that they need a new CEO of Twitter. Part of that comes from pressure from Tesla investors who think he's asleep at the wheel when it comes to running that company.

But the other thing is that this isn't the first time that Elon Musk has used a poll to govern Twitter. You'll recall that he put out a poll to ask whether or not he should bring Donald Trump back. The conclusion of that poll was to bring him back, and so he did, in fact, say Donald Trump could return. So I think that Elon Musk is eventually going to step down as the CEO of Twitter. But it's worth remembering, Kaitlan, he's still the owner, he's still going to be just as involved as he wants to be even if he doesn't have the technical title of CEO.

COLLINS: So do you think that this has more to do with the backlash that he's been facing over these changes he's making, or do you think it is because he's stretched too thin when it comes to Tesla and to SpaceX.

FISCHER: If you look at the people who use Twitter who voted in that poll, I think it's people who are exhausted from some of these platform changes happening all the time and people who are exhausted from the drama and the headlines. They want this platform to just go back to being functional the way that it used to be.

Now, it could be that some people are looking at Elon Musk and they're saying we want to see this guy succeed, we want to see him innovate. And right now as the CEO of Twitter, it's more bad headlines than good. But I think overwhelmingly the people that voted in the poll, they are just exhausted from this platform having no consistent rules or content moderation policies.

COLLINS: Sara Fischer, thanks so much.

FISCHER: Thank you.

LEMON: So we have some very sad news to tell you today. Our colleague and friend and longtime distinguished CNN journalist Drew Griffin has passed away. Drew was with the investigative unit of CNN based in Atlanta since 2004. His wide-ranging expertise included politics, sports, government, and corporate investigations. In 2015 Drew earned a Peabody Award for his probe into delays at veterans affairs hospitals. He won three national Emmys for his reporting exposing corporate and congressional corruption.

[08:15:00]

Prior to joining CNN, he was an investigative reporter at CBS in Los Angeles for 10 years, and we honor -- we're going to honor him a little bit later on this hour.

I am so sorry.

COLLINS: I know this is tough for you. You said, he was one of the first people you met on CNN.

LEMON: I'm sorry.

COLLINS: Drew was such a good storyteller. We will have more for you next.

Back in a moment.

LEMON: Sorry.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEISHA LANCE BOTTOMS, FORMER ATLANTA, GEORGIA MAYOR: What we are seeing happening is that many people are taking advantage of the fact that Title 42 may go away this week. We have seen many people exploiting migrants saying "come now or you lose your ability to come at all" and that is simply not the case.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: The Biden administration responding to concerns as the Democratic Mayor of El Paso has declared a State of Emergency.

Migrants are setting up camp on the border waiting for that official end that is coming this week to Title 42.

Title 42 is the Trump-era pandemic policy that allowed Border agents to expel migrants at the border. Now Republicans and Democrats alike are bracing for the expected huge wave of people.

Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott says if Title 42 is lifted, he believes there will be "total chaos." Democratic Senator Joe Manchin adding his voice to the bipartisan push for a White House intervention.

CNN's Ed Lavandera is live in El Paso.

Ed, it is pretty remarkable for them to declare the State of Emergency. What are the implications of it? ED LAVANDERA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, one of the initial

things we'll be able to see here, Kaitlan, is if you remember over the last week or so, we have seen hundreds of migrants sleeping out here on the streets of El Paso.

But since that emergency declaration was made over the weekend, crews have been able to come through here and essentially move a lot of these migrants who haven't been able to find room in shelters into other shelters that have been opening up or into hotels.

So there has been a push to try to alleviate the scenes that we have been seeing here on the streets of El Paso. They say it also creates the ability for them to get more resources as far as food and shelter. And really, this is a logistical nightmare challenge that the cities in many of these border communities will be facing and they say, the best way to avert a total humanitarian breakdown here is to really move people through these border communities as quickly as possible so that once they get processed out of Border Patrol, they're not just sitting in border communities.

Many of these people are not trying to stay in border communities anyway, they're trying to get to other destinations in the US while they await their Immigration Court process.

[08:20:10]

LAVANDERA: And what they're trying to do is try to alleviate that logistical nightmare to get people moving as quickly as possible, so that means getting them on buses, and flights or other kinds of transportation to get them out of these border communities, and that would help the backlog of people that will be in these cities.

So that's really the main challenge that many of these people have, but the clock is ticking. We are two days away, Title 42 ends on Wednesday -- Kaitlan.

COLLINS: And do officials there feel like they have the resources they need to deal with this?

LAVANDERA: No. The fact of the matter is, they don't. They say that, you know, we cannot get enough funding to spend our way out of this, that this is, whatever they're doing, they are basically just kind of hanging on by thread and doing the most bare minimum that they possibly can to do this.

I mean, this is a great deal of pressure, not just on Border Patrol officials in these border communities, but as well as non-government organizations like charities and shelters, and churches that are helping with this.

So it really is -- and they're trying to open up more space. I know there are efforts as either contract with hotel rooms or open up other waiting areas where people can wait in safe places, so they can catch their bus rides and flights out of town, but all of that stuff is not quite online yet from what we can tell in El Paso, and officials here say that they're just basically reacting to what is going to be a very difficult situation, perhaps one of the biggest challenges the city has ever seen.

COLLINS: Yes. Thank you, Ed.

Also happening right now, more asylum seekers are arriving in New York City. Up to 15 more buses carrying migrants are expected over the next several days. City officials say they are stretched very thin, not dissimilar from what you just heard from Ed there.

They have a shelter system that is already at capacity, and tens of thousands are still waiting to be processed. The numbers that are surging at the Southern border as Title 42 is set to expire on Wednesday, this is not just having impacts.

Polo Sandoval, your live for us at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York. It's not just having impacts on the Southern border. We're also seeing it as far as New York.

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Because those families, Kaitlan, don't remain at the border. Many of them bring themselves or are brought to cities like New York City.

And you know, when we first began to cover the story of these families arriving in places like New York Port Authority here in Manhattan, I remember one of the NGOs telling me this summer that if you think these numbers are overwhelming, just wait for the lifting of Title 42.

And now, short of any Supreme Court action as we get closer to that date, as Ed has just mentioned, in a few days, there certainly is some concern here in New York City coming from Mayor Eric Adams who over the weekend saying that the city needs that critical, that crucial funding not just from the State, but also from the Federal government, as they expect the number of migrants to sharply increase, many of them are likely to consider New York City as a place where they want their asylum proceedings to play out.

The Mayor saying that based on what he is hearing from the experts that we could see at least another 1,000 asylum seekers arriving here in New York City a week, that is on top of the numbers that we have been seeing lately, which is still a decrease from what we saw earlier this summer.

This morning, a couple of buses arriving here with a few hundred. A couple more buses expected later today, but it really just gives you a sense, Kaitlan of the situation here on the ground, with city officials recognizing that the numbers are only going to increase and the spending from the city is likely to continue to increase over a billion dollars.

Back to you.

COLLINS: Yes, Polo Sandoval, thank you.

All right, there are renewed calls for stronger weaponry this morning after overnight drone strikes. More of those drone strikes happened against critical infrastructure in Kyiv, what the Ukrainian Air Force is saying. And our next guest traveled the country and got quite a close up at

the division that led up to the attack on January 6. The director, producer and star of the new HBO documentary is going to join us live to talk about what he saw.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:28:13]

LEMON: Welcome back, everyone to CNN THIS MORNING. We are live here in Washington, DC ahead of the January 6 Committee's final public meeting, and we have new CNN reporting on the White House and how they are keeping an eye on the Committee's work.

Plus, Russia is increasing its assault on Ukraine's critical infrastructure, a new message from President Zelenskyy.

So jury selection is set to begin today for the trial of former Proud Boys leader, Enrique Tarrio. The far-right group leader has been charged with seditious conspiracy in the January 6th Capitol attack, he denies the charges.

COLLINS: Our next guest actually spent time with him in the days leading up to January 6th. It's all on camera as well for a new HBO documentary.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In 2020, she got super serious -- protest, pandemics --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Basically a slave right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Remember that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Freedom.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We think that they're trying to steal our elections.

(CROWD chanting "Stop that Steal.")

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All you have are personal attacks.

ALEX JONES, INFOWARS HOST: Info war, not physical war.

ANDREW CALLAHAN, HBO ORIGINAL "THIS PLACE RULES": My name is Andrew Callahan, this is the story of the events that led up to the January 6 Capitol riot..

Have you ever feel like you've gone too far down the rabbit hole?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: So joining us now is the director, producer, and star in this documentary called "This Place Rules," which debuts on HBO December 30th, Andrew Callahan.

Andrew, this is a lot because it is a deep dive into this documentary, and there are is -- there is so much to talk about here when it comes to who you spend time with, what you saw. But, you know, when it comes to what is happening today, Enrique Tarrio, he was not at the Capitol on the 6th, but he still played a role in this and he is facing some of the most serious charges that are stemming from that day.

What did you see from him as you were shooting this?

CALLAHAN: Yes, I just talked to him in the lead up to the January 6 Capital riot, just hung out with him a little bit in DC and Miami and elsewhere.

[08:30:14]