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House Ways and Means Committee to Make Public Six Years of Former President Trump's Tax Records; New Transcripts Released of Testimony to House January 6th Committee by Donald Trump Jr.; Southwest Airlines Announces Scheduled Flights Returning to Normal; Times Square Fully Open for First Time Since COVID-19 Pandemic for New Year's Celebration; New York Republican Congress-Elect George Santos Criticized for Lying about His Personal and Professional Background; Rep.-Elect Santos' Comments On His Mom's Death, 9/11 Faces Scrutiny; Southwest Resuming Normal Flight Schedule Today After Week Of Chaos. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired December 30, 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]

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Instead the House Ways and Means Committee is going to make public six years of the former president's tax records. This will end that battle that began back in 2015 when Trump announced his first run for president and he broke with modern precedent by refusing to disclose his personal financial information as a candidate and as a sitting president.

So why are they coming out now? Well, it's the Supreme Court, in short. That November decision following a lengthy court battle is what paved the way for the release that's about to happen in just moments from now. And this is significant. Lawmakers have rarely sought to make public confidential taxpayer information. There is some precedent. Now we're going to see a whole new one today.

CNN's Lauren Fox is live on Capitol Hill for CNN this morning. Lauren, what time are we expecting these to come out? That's what everyone really wants to know.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kaitlan, this is going to happen around 9:00 a.m., so just less than an hour at this point. And we are mere steps away from the House floor where this is going to get entered into the congressional record. What you should expect to see today is the Ways and Means Committee is going to release a press release that will include the following documents. One of them, Trump's personal federal tax returns for the years between 2015 and 2020 as well as the returns for eight of his business entities.

And here's where the real treasure trove of information could come from, additional work files that the IRS might have as they were looking over former President Donald Trump's taxes.

We should talk about the importance of this moment because it is coming mere four days before Republicans take control of the House of Representatives, and we should note that this was really one of the last possible moments that Democrats could get these documents into the congressional record before Republicans take control. And we didn't always expect that this information would become public. Remember that when the Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal requested these documents back in 2019, he said he needed this information to understand how the presidential audit program worked. Last week lawmakers had a closed-door meeting in the Ways and Means Committee to try to discuss what they wanted to do with these underlying returns. They voted. They decided along party lines to release them. But obviously a moment that Republicans are calling unprecedented and coming just before Democrats hand power over to the House Republicans on Tuesday.

COLLINS: It's an incredibly important thing to remember. Is this something that we are going to see now, the tit for tat in the future? Lauren Fox, we are standing by for 9:00 a.m. with that release. Thank you.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, newly released transcripts show the House January 6th committee's interview with Donald Trump Jr., the former president's son. And they provide new context to a text that he sent to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows right after the 2020 election. That text included a detailed plan from Don Jr. to try to keep his father in power for a second term. Katelyn Polantz joins us now with details. So let's begin there with how he explains why he did that.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Right. So Poppy, what we're seeing here is people like Donald Trump Jr. explaining why they did what they did. We already knew that Donald Trump Jr. had sent a text message to Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, on November 5th essentially saying, you should look into the state legislators blocking the vote or electoral -- using fake electors to help Trump win. And then what he says to the House select committee when they ask him about this, he says, the idea sounded plausible to him, that it seemed like an idea that was sophisticated and that he wanted someone to look into it.

So he was going directly to the person that was the closest conduit in the White House to the president, his father, at the time. That was Mark Meadows, and he was pushing this to Mark Meadows. And Meadows eventually did respond to him that he was working on things like this. We see later in other people's transcripts other actions that Meadows took. Others were recounting what they remembered from meetings and interactions with the White House chief of staff. One of them comes from Christina Bobb, she was the lawyer working with Donald Trump. And she remembered a meeting where Mark Meadows met with Senator Lindsey Graham, and Graham said, in Christina Bobb's telling, just give me five dead voters. Give me an example of illegals voting. Just give me a very small snapshot that I can take and champion. So people like Lindsey Graham at the time after the election were very interested in trying to help Trump advance this myth of voter fraud. Graham ultimately didn't do anything with the information that the campaign provided because it was so implausible.

COLLINS: And Katelyn, what else stood out to you as you were going through these transcripts?

POLANTZ: Kaitlan, there's one of the things that you keep seeing in these transcripts is there is a deep bench of people in the White House who are witnessing all kinds of conversations. The White House was really consumed with what was happening, what Donald Trump wanted. And one of the things, one of the people that spoke to the committee, a transcript that was released yesterday was Stephanie Grisham's. She's the former chief of staff to Melania Trump and a former White House press secretary.

[08:05:03]

And one of the things that she recalls is that people in the West Wing were speaking about how Donald Trump was calling rioters trashy looking, that they looked trashy, but they were fighters so he was supporting them. And Grisham also remembers that Melania Trump was not trusting people like some of the top lawyers around Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, at times not trusting her own family members to have the best interests of Donald Trump at heart.

And she also brings up a story very briefly about an usher at the White House who was trying to help the Biden transition team come in. Donald Trump and Mark Meadows didn't think that person was being loyal enough and potentially wanted to fire him until Melania Trump stepped in.

COLLINS: Wait, and so he, Stephanie Grisham says that Trump was watching what happened on January 6th and described his supporters who were storming the Capitol as looking trashy.

POLANTZ: Looking trashy, but they were fighters, and he appreciated that. It's all in the visuals for him.

HARLOW: Wow. Katelyn, thank you.

COLLINS: Also, this morning, Southwest Airlines using a word that will give a lot of travelers a sigh of relief, "normal," after mass flight cancellations left thousands of travelers frustrated, stranded across the country during the Christmas holiday. Today the flight tracking site Flight Aware says that only 41 Southwest cancellations are happening. That is after they had almost 16,000 total flights canceled amid the chaos. The CEO offering a new apology just moments ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB JORDAN, CEO, SOUTHWEST AIRLINES: Let me just be straight forward here. The storm had an impact, but we had impacts beyond the storm that obviously impacted Southwest very differently. It really was the scope of the problems attempting to be solved just to move crews around, keep the airline moving. We have great tools. We have regular operations. Those tools of process have served us well. But this is something that we have really never seen in our 51 years. And we're making investments in our operational areas like always. There will be lessons learned from this and we'll continue to make more investments.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Adrienne Broaddus is live for CNN this morning at Chicago's Midway International Airport. Adrienne, I know the CEO of Southwest said he has been talking to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, he's been having those conversations. What should the passengers who are behind you, those who have had their flights canceled, be expecting?

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So far here, at least at Chicago Midway, Kaitlan, they are off to a great start. And as you mentioned, yes, he has been speaking with the transportation secretary, and they are aligned in their hope -- excuse me. They are aligned in their hop to do right by Southwest customers. I feel like some of the travelers here, getting tongue tied. A lot of those travelers are tired, but they do want answers. So listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB JORDAN, CEO, SOUTHWEST AIRLINES: Our desire is to go above and beyond. We always take care of our customers. That is our 51-year history here at Southwest Airlines. We'll be looking at and taking care of things like rental cars, hotel rooms, meals, booking customers on other airlines, so that will all be part of what we're covering here as we reimburse our customers and make good on this issue.

I want to be really frank. This has impacted so many people, so many customers over the holidays. It has impacted our employees. And I am extremely sorry for that. There is just no way almost to apologize enough because we love our customers, we love our people, and we really impacted their plans.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROADDUS: And people are still feeling that impact. Just moments ago, I spoke with a traveler right here who was checking her bag. Her name was Velvet (ph) Calhoun (ph) and we're going to show you video of her. She said she was afraid to check her bags, so that is just one example of the tangible concerns here at Chicago Midway. Even though this information board looks different compared to what we've seen throughout the week, as you can see right here, on time, on time, boarding, on time, one flight delayed. But, still, some folks who are checking their bags are a little concerned in regards to their bags getting to their final destination safely. Kaitlan?

COLLINS: Yes, a lot of people still trying to get that unclaimed luggage. Adrienne Broaddus, thank you.

HARLOW: Back to normal for the first time since 2020, crowds will gather at full capacity in Times Square tomorrow night to ring in the New Year. Our Gloria Pazmino is just a short distance away from us there in Times Square. I have been on your assignment so many times, and it's always so much fun because people are so excited. Like people fly to New York from around the world. Kaitlan is laughing, looking at me. But like, can we take a two shot please? Because she is so excited that I am so excited. It's really fun, Gloria. So I hope you're enjoying it. COLLINS: I don't know if I would go to Times Square on New Year's

Eve.

[08:10:05]

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's the biggest party, it's the biggest party on earth. It's the biggest party on earth. You have to be excited. It's the end of the year and people get to come here to Times Square to mark the end of the year, to the best place, the best city in the world, New York City. And as you mentioned, Poppy, this year all restrictions have been lifted. Outdoor events have not had any restrictions here in New York City.

And in the last two years this celebration was significantly scaled down because of COVID. So we are expecting to see a big turnout this year. Thousands of people likely to gather right here tomorrow starting early, because if you want to get a good spot you have to get here early.

HARLOW: We're going to send Kaitlan there next year to the biggest party.

(LAUGHTER)

COLLINS: I think I might be sick that day.

HARLOW: Thank you, Gloria. Have a good time.

COLLINS: Have fun, Gloria.

All right, also this morning here in New York, Congressman-elect George Santos is under pressure to explain several lies that he has made about his background, but now people are questioning -- it's hard to even really believe this -- whether he lied about his own mother's death. We're going to tell you the details and the questions people are raising next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: New York Congressman-elect George Santos is facing new scrutiny this morning about the death of his late mother after already being under pressure to explain himself after he fabricated several parts of his background. In July, 2021, the congressman-elect tweeted, quote, "911 claimed my mother's life." But five months later tweeted that December 23rd marked the day he lost his best friend and mentor. Santos's campaign website also makes reference to the story but claims his mother survived the attack, passed away a few years later, that's a quote, from cancer.

Santos has acknowledged fabricating claims about his education, professional background, philanthropic foundation, and even his Jewish heritage. The Republican Jewish Committee denounced that which recently said that he will no longer be welcome at any of their events. Let me read you part of what they said. "He deceived us and misrepresented his heritage in public comments and to us personally. He previously claimed to be Jewish. He has begun his tenure in Congress on a very wrong note. He will not be welcome at any future RJC event."

[08:15:00]

Thank you very much. By the way, it's Republican Jewish Coalition. My apologies for that.

Joining us now is the former mayor of Bal Harbour, Florida, Gabriel Groisman. He is currently a board member of RJC. Thank you for being here. It's just so odd and surreal that we have to, you know, even be talking about this with you who made with -- about someone who made these claims. And you met him, as I understand it, is that right, you met him in November at RJC's conference in Las Vegas?

GABRIEL GROISMAN, BOARD MEMBER, REPUBLICAN JEWISH COALITION: A good morning. Yes, I met him at the conference. He spoke. He was presented as a new Jewish congressman in the paper that he presented to us and to the public. On his position paper on Israel, he identifies himself as a proud American Jew, you know.

And it's really just ridiculous the world we're living in, where he explains himself by saying, well, he identifies as Jewish but he's -- he was raised in practice -- as a practicing Catholic. You know, the whole concept of you can identify something or not, and we're supposed to accept it as absurd. You know he's masquerading -- was masquerading around as a Jew for some perceived political benefit. And you know, that's really game over in my book.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR (on camera): So, when he says, I never claimed to be Jewish, he's lying.

GROISMAN: That's absolutely false. It's in black and white in his position paper on Israel, which, by the way, on substances, is a great position paper. There's no reason to masquerade as a Jew to try to gain the support of the Jewish community. The Jewish community will support you if you support the right issues, not you know just saying that you're an American Jew.

You know, it's incredible. He -- one thing he did provide is he proved that a Republican can win the third congressional district in New York, he flipped that seat, it was 10 points -- a 20-point swing, he won by over 10 points. And hopefully, luckily, congressional terms are short. And in another two years, they'll be out of there, and we'll be able to put someone in there strong that actually is who they say they are.

HARLOW: He also said, Gabriel, that his grandparents "survived the Holocaust as Ukrainian Jewish refugees from Belgium." And then he said that they changed their surname to survive. He claimed himself to be an American Jew. And then in another surreal moment, said, no, no, no, I just meant I was Jew-ish. The Holocaust.

GROISMAN: Yes, listen --

HARLOW: I just hear the reaction to this claim about the Holocaust.

GROISMAN: All right. We're living in a time when people don't even believe the Holocaust happened. People don't understand the breadth and the depth of the damage caused. 6 million Jews killed systematically by Hitler and the Nazis around Eastern Europe. And then we have people now trying to take those stories for themselves to try to gain -- you know, I don't even know what he's gaining from it or what he gained from it. It's just -- it's beyond ridiculous.

We need to expect more from our elected officials and our political parties. This isn't -- this isn't a political issue. It's just an issue of integrity, this is an issue of honesty, and is an issue of what we need to expect from our leaders.

COLLINS: Gabriel, you talked about how someone else should run in that seat a Republican that you would like to see there. Do you -- do you want him to resign?

GROISMAN: Listen. No. Resigning doesn't really accomplish anything. I'm not sure of the mechanisms anyways, what would happen if he were to resign? He should serve a seat. He shouldn't be given any committee assignments. He should just be a placeholder for the next two years. That's the -- that's you know the best thing that leadership can do.

I haven't heard them say then -- saying that they're going to do that yet. I hope that they get there. That just becomes a placeholder seat for the party. And in two years, we replace him.

HARLOW: It sounds like you -- I mean, you're happy that that flipped to be a Republican seat, right? That's what you're saying.

GROISMAN: Absolutely.

HARLOW: OK, but --

GROISMAN: Absolutely.

HARLOW: What so then given that, what do you make of the silence from Republican leadership though, about him?

GROISMAN: I think they're being careful. And I'm hoping that obviously, by being on the -- on your show, and on others, you know that they do the right thing, which is by sidelining him, right. If he's in his seat, but he has no committee assignments, then he really has no role or responsibility. And it's not so hard to get behind another strong candidate in the third congressional district now that we've seen that it's a winnable seat, and just get him out of there in just under two years.

COLLINS: Yes. I'm a cynic from Washington. I imagine we'll hear a lot more from Republican leadership after the leadership elections on Tuesday. Gabriel, thank you for joining us this morning with that perspective.

GROISMAN: Thanks for having me. Happy New Year.

COLLINS: Thank you.

HARLOW: Denver International Airport, one of the hardest hit by delays and cancellations, they are now calling for a review of three airlines to learn how this could have been prevented. The CEO of the Denver Airport is here next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:23:18]

COLLINS: Ahead of the New Year's weekend, Southwest now says a recovery is in sight as the airline is aiming to resume full service with "minimal disruptions." Over the last week, the airline has canceled nearly 16,000 flights. While other airlines managed to recover in the days after that storm that swept the U.S., for Southwest, it only got worse. Moments ago, the CEO of the company, Bob Jordan said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB JORDAN, CEO, SOUTHWEST AIRLINES: This has impacted so many people, so many customers over the holidays. It's impacted our employees. And I'm extremely sorry for that. There's just no way almost to apologize enough because we love our customers, we love our people, and we really impacted their plans. But there'll be a lot of lessons learned in terms of what we can do to make sure that this never happens again because this needs to never happen again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Joining us now to talk about the Southwest chaos is Phillip Washington who is the CEO of Denver International Airport where Southwest operates more gates than any other airport in the world. So, you have a very good perspective on this. So far, your airport, is it back to normal when it comes to Southwest?

PHILLIP A. WASHINGTON, CEO, DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT: Well, we're getting there -- we're getting there. We have been in contact with Southwest on a daily basis, probably by hour, actually. And I want to see what happens today. We've been told as has been reported that normal operations will commence today. And so, we want to see if that happens that we want to make sure that our passengers and our airport here are safe and comfortable.

COLLINS: So, you're taking a wait-and-see approach when it comes to the normal schedule.

[08:25:03]

You know, what are these executives telling you when you talk to them? Are you talking to Bob Jordan? Who are you having these conversations with?

WASHINGTON: Well, there's regional folks here for Southwest that we work with all the time. And we're talking with them constantly. And what they talk about is delays will be reduced, cancellations will be reduced, and a normal schedule starting today. We have been very, very active in working with Southwest over the last week to make sure that passengers are comfortable. We had -- one night we had 4000 people stay overnight in our airport here. And so, the issue here is making them comfortable. We've handed out thousands of blankets. We've handed out thousands of diapers and bottles and water, and trying to make people comfortable and trying to get them connected with their bags as well.

COLLINS: And I know part of that, you know, once you've dealt with that aspect of it is you say you want to conduct this after-action review.

WASHINGTON: Yes.

COLLINS: You know, do you expect changes to come from Southwest's relationship with the Denver Airport after that review is conducted?

WASHINGTON: Yes, I do. I mean, this is an opportunity for us to learn. This is an opportunity for us to seize the opportunity to learn. An after-action review is asking a number of questions, is asking what was supposed to happen, what actually happened, why it happened, what went well, what went wrong, and what can we do next time around and make it better. And so, we invited not just Southwest, but we invited the three largest airlines at my airport here in Denver, and all three of them have accepted the invitation to sit down and determine how we can do this better next time around.

COLLINS: Well, critics have said Southwest had the money to upgrade its systems, which is part of the reason you're the blame here and chose to hand it to shareholders instead, you know. The airline recently announced it was going to pay that dividend again. That amounts to $428 million a year. Do you think that Southwest ignored needed investments while instead tending to investors?

WASHINGTON: Well, listen, I won't comment on, you know, how they're doing business and their internal infrastructure. What I will say is that we all need resilient infrastructure. I mean, I need resilient infrastructure here at my airport. I need to know where my people are at the airport. We had all hands on deck for the last week, working 24/7 at the Denver International Airport. And so, while I would not comment on, you know, their infrastructure, I will say that when you run in a big organization, or in this case, an Airlines, you need resilient infrastructure.

COLLINS: Yes. And how much baggage -- how much-unclaimed baggage do you have in your airport right now? What are you going to do with all of that?

WASHINGTON: Well, what we've done, we got to the point where we had thousands of pieces of baggage. And I think some of the video footage has shown that. What we did here was give Southwest a larger area for the bags. I talked to Denver Police Department to add increased security around those bags. We were very, very concerned with the security of the bags.

Any airport is sort of a target-rich environment, if you will, in terms of luggage and valuables, and so we provided that security. I do see some improvement at the airport, being out there yesterday, and we'll be out there this morning. I do see some improvement in terms of the bags being reduced -- just the volume of the bags being reduced. So, I think people are beyond connected with their bags. We've seen people on the terminal floor in tears, we've seen some of them very happy to find their bags, and so our priority is to make sure that we can do whatever we can to facilitate that.

COLLINS: I want to ask you before you go, the president nominated you back in July to lead the Federal Aviation Administration. Obviously, that's the position you have to be confirmed to and you have not gotten your Senate confirmation hearing yet. And because the current Congress ends in next week, the president wants to re-nominate you to this position in order to get that process going again. Has the White House told you that they do plan to do so?

WASHINGTON: I won't comment on conversations with the White House. What I will say is that I'm in this job now. I enjoy this job. This running the Denver International Airport, and I'll do the best that I possibly can. I am honored by the nomination. And if that happens -- if confirmation happens, I'll do the best job I can there as well.

COLLINS: OK, just so you do still expect to eventually have that job leading the FAA?

WASHINGTON: Well, we'll see what happens. Tomorrow is not promised to anybody.