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CNN This Morning

Former Vice President Mike Pence Responds to Report Donald Trump Made Him Call Governor of Arizona to Try and Overturn 2020 Presidential Election; Two Killed, 28 Injured, Most of Them Teens at Baltimore Block Party; Zelenskyy: Mercenary Revolt Shows Putin is Weak. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired July 03, 2023 - 08:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MAYOR BRANDON SCOTT, (D) BALTIMORE: We are still investigating, going through every single lead, every minute, every second of footage, everything we have to find out who decided to disrupt this peaceful event in this way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Good Monday morning, everyone. I'm Phil Mattingly. Audie Cornish is here with me. And a manhunt is underway right now for multiple suspects after a mass shooting killed at least two people and injured dozens more at a block party in Baltimore. The victims, mostly teenagers, some as young as 13.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Mike Pence responding after a CNN report that Donald Trump made him call the Governor of Arizona to try and overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

MATTINGLY: Plus, a Christian web designer told the Supreme Court a gay man wanted her to make a site for his same sex wedding. He says she never did. He's straight and he's married to a woman already.

This hour of CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Audie.

CORNISH: Good morning.

MATTINGLY: You're still here.

CORNISH: Yes, I am.

MATTINGLY: And I appreciate that, because at various points in the last two hours, I was like, Audie's going to leave if I push this any further.

CORNISH: I've thought of getting up, but yes, it's nice to see you.

MATTINGLY: It's nice to see you as well. And there's new reaction this morning from former vice president Mike

Pence just one day after CNN learned that then Donald Trump, then President Donald Trump pressured then Arizona governor Doug Ducey to help overturn his 2020 defeat pressure the governor rebuffed. Pence says he didn't recall any pressure from Trump to help push Ducey to find fraud.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, (R) FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: I did check in with not only governor Ducey but other governors in states that were going through the legal process of reviewing their election results, but there was no pressure involved, Margaret. I was calling to get an update. I passed along that information to the president, and it was no more, no less than that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: According to "The Washington Post," Ducey told a donor that he was surprised that he hadn't heard from Special Counsel Jack Smith's office about the phone calls with Trump and Pence, at least according to that donor. After all, we do know that Smith spoke to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger about this call.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: So, look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Still surreal every time I listen on it.

Pressure on state and local officials, that's just one facet of the federal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. It seems prosecutors are getting closer and closer to potential charging decisions. CNN's senior legal analyst Elie Honig is here. And Elie, let's start broadening out and then drill in a little bit. What is DOJ looking at right now.

ELIE HONIG, SENIOR CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Phil, will all the focus on Mar-a-Lago, it's easy to forget, Jack Smith has another job on his hands. He's got to look at January 6th. Now, Jack Smith is focusing on this effort that really took hold after Trump lost the election to try to swing and steal the election results in these seven swing states, including by directly pressuring state officials. We know about the infamous phone call that we just heard that Trump placed to Brad Raffensperger, asking him to just find 11,780 votes.

Now, we know that last week, Jack Smith did speak with Brad Raffensperger, arguably belatedly. It's been a year since he testified in front of the January 6th committee. And we're also now learning that Donald Trump pressured the then governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey. Now, Doug Ducey has said that Jack Smith has actually not contacted him. That could be on the to-do list. And I think it's very consistent with what DOJ has been doing.

There's also been this focus on what we call the fake electors scheme. What that means is there was a coordinated effort, all seven of these states, people working for and with Trump and his team, put together actual documents that they actually submitted to the National Archives that said we are the rightly selected electors for Donald Trump. And then people, Republicans, Trump supporters from those states actually signed those certifications. Now, we know that the DOJ has spoken with several of these fake electors. We don't know exactly who. They've been given immunity, meaning, you have to testify. We're not going to use your statements against you. Tells me DOJ sees these folks as potential witnesses.

MATTINGLY: So what else at this point would they be looking into. What else is on the table?

HONIG: So as that effort clearly was not going to succeed, the focus turned instead to last-minute efforts. They established this war room at the Willard Hotel a couple of blocks away from the White House. Rudy Giuliani was in that war room.

[08:05:00]

We know DOJ has spoken to Rudy Giuliani. Query whether he can ever be a credible witness. I sure as heck would never rely on him, but they've spoken with him.

We also know that DOJ has spoken with Mark Meadows. Now, he didn't physically go to the war room, but we've seen public testimony that he called over to the war room on January 5th. And of course, the end result, one of the end results of that war room was they decided, let's put pressure on Mike Pence to just throw out the electoral votes when he has to count them on January 6th. Of course, Pence refused to do that, and then Donald Trump during the actual riot, 2:24 p.m., while the capitol was being stormed, sent this negative tweet about Mike Pence, saying he didn't have the courage to do what should have been done. Mike pence has also spoken to DOJ. He's testified in the grand jury. So that's another base that they've covered.

MATTINGLY: There's a lot of buzz right now that a potential charging decision could be coming in the very near-term, we don't know when. It's all speculation, like always. What are prosecutors looking at.

HONIG: So sometimes we say all of this, or January 6th, but let's look at what specific crimes could be in play here. Obstruction of an official proceeding, meaning, they tried to block the counting of electoral votes. That charge has been used successfully against many of the people who actually stormed the Capitol. Potentially false statements. Remember those false elector certificates. They're false, they were actually submitted to the archives. Conspiracy to defraud the United States is sort of the broadest legal theory, meaning they tried to cheat the election.

And people have said, could there be incitement charges for what Donald Trump said at the ellipse, did he incite the riot? That's going to be difficult because, yes, he said, we're going to go down to the capitol, yes, he said you're going to fight like hell. But he also said, be peaceful and patriotic.

And just to keep in mind what's happening inside DOJ, Jack Smith is the special counsel. He's running this investigation. When it comes to January 6th, he's going to recommend, indict or do not indict. Either way, it then goes to the attorney general. Now, the A.G. has to defer to Jack Smith, but we've already seen Merrick Garland is willing to approve a criminal charge of the president. So, yes, it does look like they're working towards charging decisions and these re going to be the big decisions that have to be made.

MATTINGLY: Significant, potentially soon. Elie, come on back. We're going to sit down.

HONIG: I'll follow you.

CORNISH: As they're headed back, we have here Semafor Politics reporter Shelby Talcott, and of course, former New York Congressman Max Rose. Welcome back. Max, I want to start with you, because it sounds like Ducey is all of a sudden being kind of public with this information. Why do you think that is?

MAX ROSE, (D) FORMER NEW YORK CONGRESSMAN: Well, he's also not being that public, is he? It begs the question, where have you been? And haven't you felt any sense of --

CORNISH: And talking to donors about it is an interesting choice.

ROSE: Right. So he's not coming to the press. He goes, I wonder why the special counsel hasn't contacted me yet. It's a two-way street. You can, of course, reach out to Justice if you have any knowledge of a crime. There are so many people that have been implicated in this over the years in the way they have explicitly or implicitly empowered or supported Donald Trump's effort to utterly destroy the Constitution of the United States of America.

CORNISH: And by that you mean all of those phone calls to various states, the fake elector schemes, things like that.

ROSE: Of course, but also one other thing. Vice President Pence admitted already to having called governors during this process. A call from the president -- from the vice president of the United States is not casual. A call from the vice president of the United States where he claims to be checking in on something is not a casual instance. So that in and of itself, I do believe, is him interfering in this process.

CORNISH: Although, I think we have some audio of Mike Pence, right, talking about this issue.

MATTINGLY: From yesterday. Do you want to play his framing of those calls that Max is talking about?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, (R) FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: I did check in with not only Governor Ducey, but other governors and states that were going through the legal process of reviewing their election results. But there was no pressure involved, Margaret. I was calling to get an update. I passed along that information to the president. And it was no more, no less than that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Jack Smith is nothing if not thorough. That's what we've learned from the documents case. How much should anyone read into what's going on here?

SHELBY TALCOTT, POLITICS REPORTER, SEMAFOR: I mean, I think it's pretty serious. And I think, as you said, he's a very legitimate prosecutor. He knows what he's doing. He's very thorough. And if Ducey hasn't been spoken to yet, I do expect eventually he will be spoken to and he will be interviewed, even if there's no audio tape, so it might be less important in terms of charging. But certainly, I think given how this investigation is ramping up, he's going to be interviewed, if I had to guess.

HONIG: It's a really good point, because Brad Raffensperger's testimony isn't all that important, because we have the audio. I mean, the audio is the most important piece of evidence. But with Governor Ducey, there is no audio. So that entire piece of testimony, that's going to define whatever Jack Smith knows, and whatever perhaps a jury eventually knows. It's also important to note one of the things here has been delay, right.

[08:10:00]

Ducey said, what took so long? I think if we're going to apportion blame for delay within DOJ, more of it needs to fall on Merrick Garland, because Merrick Garland took a year-and-a-half plus before he appointed Jack Smith, during which time nobody at DOJ reached out to the top level of power. Jack Smith has now been in power since November, so I guess we're seven, eight months in, and there's been a notable uptick, and in the meantime, by the way, he indicted Mar-a- Lago. So I agree, Jack Smith is really doing things by the book and he's moving quite quickly, but this is still a big task ahead.

MATTINGLY: Can I ask, Elie, to be clear, Ducey's spokesman put out a statement saying none of this is really new. This is more of a compilation of what we all knew, that I think the wrinkle is what you picked up on in terms of Ducey talking to the donors according to "The Washington Post". Where is the former president's biggest legal exposure in this particular case, and does Ducey's comments or what has been reported change anything in that regard?

HONIG: Yes, I think the biggest concern if I'm the president's legal team here is the fake electors scheme, if he can be tied to it, because we know that it was a coordinated effort. But it seems to me that Merrick Garland is very much, as good prosecutors should be, attracted to the clean-cut, black and white charges. Mar-a-Lago, right, it's sort of plug and play. Here's the statute, here's the facts, it matches. If we're going into charges like incitement or attempt to steal an election, you're going to get inherently into gray area, into potentially free speech areas. But if you can show, these documents were signed and submitted to the Archives and to the Senate, and they were false, that could give prosecutors a cleaner shot.

CORNISH: Well, we still see Trump talking on the campaign trail about the problems. It has not stopped him. What's going on there?

ROSE: When Trump believes that you do things out in the open, you can't be blamed for them and there are not consequences for doing things publicly.

CORNISH: Or that it's showing you don't have malicious intent.

ROSE: Sure, you never forgive, never apologize. That's his theory of the case here. What's interesting is that from the vantage point of the Biden campaign, they need to walk a very fine line. It's a force that the judicial process and this law enforcement process will continue, but always bringing the conversation back to economics. I don't think it is any surprise that while all of this continues to go on, Biden is talking about Bidenomics, owning the economy, largest growth of the middle classs and the working class that we've seen in recent economic history. You're going to constantly see this push and pull from that campaign, which I think is spot on.

CORNISH: The fear of being seen as actually being involved in the case in some way.

ROSE: Right.

MATTINGLY: But there are some people in your party who want them to make more of a focus on this. They're saying, and I understand what you're saying. I think that's very much, when you talk to Biden White House advisers, they're saying, we cannot -- we can't touch this at all. We can't have any implication that there is involvement here. We talk to some Democrats, they're like, dude, the guy just got indicted for having hundreds of classified documents at the highest classification level sitting in his house, and there are pictures of it. Say something!

ROSE: You can do both. I don't think there will be one voter who is not very much aware of all of these charges against Donald Trump and the serious national security and moral implications of everything that's going on. On the same hand, though, it will be absolutely deadly to the Biden campaign, the reelection, if people do not think that he puts the economy first and foremost. And I think that's what you're going to see from them each and every day going forward, and that's absolutely correct.

MATTINGLY: You like Bidenomics?

CORNISH: It's the whole it's the economy, stupid.

MATTINGLY: Not the policy. I know you like the policy.

CORNISH: Branding.

MATTINGLY: T-shirts?

ROSE: Once you change the dress code -- MATTINGLY: On your TikTok.

ROSE: On my TikTok.

MATTINGLY: We create the TikTok with your Bidenomics shirt.

CORNISH: That's Max Rose, Elie Honig, and Shelby Talcott, thank you so much.

MATTINGLY: Thanks, guys.

Happening right now, a manhunt underway, still underway in Baltimore for at least two shooters accused of opening fire on a block party, killing two people and hurting 28. Most of the injured are teenagers, including two 13-year-olds. And you can see in this video people sprinting away from the gunfire early yesterday morning in surveillance video just obtained by our affiliate WJZ. Investigators say they don't know if the shooters were targeting anyone specific or if they were just shooting at random.

CNN national security correspondent Gloria Pazmino is live in Baltimore this morning. Gloria, we talked to the mayor last hour, said the investigation was ongoing. What's the latest based on what you're hearing on the ground?

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Phil, we know from police that they are looking for more than one shooter. They believe that at least two people may have been involved in this, but they have not ruled out that perhaps more people are involved. So we know they're looking for several people.

Phil, I thought your interview with the mayor, really striking comments from him regarding gun violence. But first, let me talk about what happened here on Saturday night. Several young people caught in the crossfire. This was supposed to be a celebration for this community, Brooklyn day. A celebration for the families and the people that live here. And it turned deadly, police say, shortly after midnight. Shots rang out, sending hundreds of people that had gathered here running for cover.

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I spoke to some of those people here yesterday. They told me it was absolute chaos and panic. An 18-year-old woman was killed, as well as a 20-year-old man, and 28 people were injured by gunfire. As you mentioned, many of them, teenagers, some as young as just 13 years old.

Now I want to hear what the mayor had to say just in the last hour because he made a point about talking about gun violence, not just here in Baltimore or other big cities across the country, but across the entire nation.

(Begin VT)

MAYOR BRANDON SCOTT (D), BALTIMORE, MARYLAND: These Black American lives, children's lives matter just as anyone else. We are just asking for all of them to be treated the same.

Any mass shooting, anytime anyone is murdered with an illegal gun in this country should be treated the same because it should not happen in the country that is the leader of the free world, but it does because we, as a country still allow the sanctity of American guns to outweigh the sanctity of Americans' lives and particularly Americans children's lives, and that is something that we have to change.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAZMINO: So as far as the police investigation, Phil, they are also combing through social media videos and surveillance video, hoping to gather more evidence that may lead them to finding the people that were behind Saturday night's violence, but that investigation is ongoing. Hopefully, we will learn more details later in today -- Phil.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Gloria Pazmino on the ground in Baltimore. Please keep us posted when you do. Thanks so much.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Also a CNN exclusive interview with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. We'll hear his view on the mercenary revolt within Russia.

MATTINGLY: Plus, the Biden administration debating sending cluster bombs to Ukraine, what they are and why they're banned in more than a hundred countries.

All of that, coming up next.

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CORNISH: New this morning, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in an exclusive interview with my colleague, Erin Burnett, his response to the recent revolt among Russia's Wagner Group and says that Putin's power is crumbling.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Yes, we see the reaction after certain Wagner steps. We see Putin's reaction, it's weak.

Firstly, we see he doesn't control everything. Wagner is moving deep into Russia and taking certain regions shows how easy it is to do.

Putin doesn't control the situation in the region. He doesn't control the security situation. All of us understand that his whole army is in Ukraine. Almost entire army is there. That's why it's so easy for the Wagner troops to march through Russia. Who could have stopped them?

We understand that Putin doesn't control the regional policy and he doesn't control all those people in the regions. So all that vertical power he used to have just got crumbling down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: We're going to turn now to retired US Army Major Mike Lyons.

Major Lyons, can you talk about your reaction to this?

MAJOR MIKE LYONS (RET), US ARMY: Well, I mean, his message has always been one of unified command. I think he acts as a commander-in-chief, and I think that message is really for his troops. I don't think it's for anybody else.

We see Russia obviously had a problem with the Wagner Group. Is it splintering right now? It is not really taking hold in Belarus.

So again, that message was the president's message to his troops as the counteroffensive keeps going.

MATTINGLY: Major Lyons, the Biden administration has been asked to and is now I think, taking more active consideration of approving the use or sending over cluster munitions.

Explain to people what those are. Why the Ukrainians want them and maybe why there is some reluctance from the US to send them?

LYONS: Sure. Cluster munitions, dual purpose -- improved conventional munitions are sub munitions within artillery rounds. This is an artillery round similar to the exact one that I fired when I was a battery commander during Desert Storm, and they provide a much better effect with regard to artillery effects.

We'll show you a quick video here. This is an air-delivered cluster type condition where as it falls to the ground, you'll see it airburst over the target, and then fire much of a wider spread, give much more lethality against anti-personnel and anti-vehicles.

It is a type of weapon system that though unfortunately has some cons to it. It leaves a battlefield that is dirty. There are things that could happen on the battlefield, that soldiers can't necessarily come back over the over the ground at the same time.

But however, for Ukraine's purposes, what it will do is it'll improve their counteroffensive because it'll allow them to get into -- dig in troops, it will allow them to get vehicles that are dug in and the defenses that Russia currently has.

CORNISH: Can we just talk about dirty for a second. Dirty means that civilians and soldiers can be injured by the munitions that are leftover.

LYONS: That's right. And this is one of the things that other NATO countries now have actually banned them. In 2008, a munitions treaty that the United States is not part of, but other NATO countries have banned them because these munitions as you see are little kind of things that children and other people kind of pick up on the ground, they don't always go off, so that is why they're considered dangerous.

However, they provide much more lethality than the regular field artillery weapons that we have.

MATTINGLY: I want to ask you about another -- Ukraine has long been pushing for long-range missile capability. The UK sent them, I believe the Storm Shadow capability and they've utilized it to some degree, the US has been very wary of sending what are known as ATACMS and part of the reason is because of how much the US actually has in terms of the weaponry itself.

"The Wall Street Journal" reported on Friday that they may actually be moving back towards the direction of saying yes to that. I'm told there's caution on that, and we should maintain it. However, why do the Ukrainians want this so badly? Why has the US been so reluctant to give it to them?

LYONS: Yes, ATACMS would be a game changer here for the Ukrainian military with regards to their capability. The 200 miles of range that they give them, long-range attacks that they don't have right now. However, it's a high-demand low-density weapons system.

So, we've seen the chairman of the Joint Chiefs say we just don't have a lot to give away. We don't have a lot of these out in our inventory because they're just not manufactured.

They are fired from this HIMARS, the platform that they already have there and if you look at a map what it would do is, it would allow Ukraine to attack into places like Sevastopol and then into Rostov.

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And what it would do, it would force the Russian command and control and logistics supply lines to go away from the front and have to go back here for their own survivability, giving the Ukraine maneuver forces a much better chance in order to succeed as they go on their counteroffensive.

CORNISH: All right, Major Lyons, we'd love for you to come over to the table so we can talk a little bit more.

We're here with obviously, Shelby and Max Rose.

The Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said in a news conference on Saturday that he is afraid to lose bipartisan support from the US, following "dangerous messages coming from some Republicans."

Max, I want to start with you. There's been a long shift towards more sort of familial language about Russia and there has long been sort of hostility to spending overseas. So is he right to be concerned?

MAX ROSE (D), FORMER US REPRESENTATIVE: He is absolutely right to be concerned, but we've seen this really strange reversal of traditional political positions. Normally, the Democratic Party has been the party that has been more anti-war, less interventionist.

CORNISH: And Biden's messaging is back to the sort of we support democracies no matter what. ROSE: Sure, and we support our allies. It's been a very pro-NATO,

traditional preservation of the world order message, and the Democratic Party has been impressive the degree to which they have remained unified.

Conversely, the Republican side is an absolute disarray over this issue, with a very strong isolationist bend, in fact driven by DeSantis and Donald Trump at this point.

MATTINGLY: Yes, and I think, that's just a really good point because when you talk to Biden administration folks in this space, they are less concerned about the House Republicans kind of hemming and hawing or shouting about Ukraine aid and far more concerned about the leading presidential candidates driving more Republicans outside of kind of the small group of isolationist and creating major problems because they are going to need a new funding package within the next couple of months.

How does that resonate on the campaign trail?

SHELBY TALCOTT, POLITICS REPORTER, SEMAFOR: Yes, I think it's going to be a really big deal within the Republican Party, partially because there is kind of this war within the party over what America First means. So there is kind of the traditional version of America First, which I've heard argued as America First doesn't mean America only, and then there is the America First viewpoint where it is quite literally, America first.

And so it's -- I remember reporting, I think it was my second article ever for Semafor when we launched about how back in October 2022, which was well before Trump actually announced, he was already getting people in his ear from both sides of the aisle, trying to convince him either A., to support Ukraine aid or B., to support cutting it off.

So clearly, this has been brewing for a really long time.

CORNISH: Major Mike Lyons, I just have one more question because Ukraine is in the middle of a brutal counteroffensive, right?

And so this war is not going to get any easier as they try and make their way towards the sea. So what are we looking at when we talk about sending more vicious weapons into what is turning into one of the largest land wars in Europe in decades?

LYONS: Yes, I mean we still haven't sent really the offensive weapons. They've just -- the weapons they have are really defensive.

I'm surprised the counteroffensive even started. Frankly, they're trying to do a counteroffensive against what has historically been successful. No blitzkrieg, no air superiority.

Now, these kinds of weapons, the cluster bombs --

CORNISH: And by that, you mean both Russia and Ukraine do not have air superiority? LYONS: Right. No, the Russians do. No, the Russians do. The Russians

have -- the Russians have still tremendous advantage on the ground here. Let's be sober about it.

CORNISH: But not like helicopters, et cetera.

LYONS: Yes.

CORNISH: Yes, it has still been -- not what it could be.

LYONS: Right. No, and so until some of these other weapons come, the ATACMS, likely the NATO-based tanks in the next three months, I think crew survivability is really important for Ukraine. They have to hold off right now and give themselves a chance to make sure that when some more of those weapon platforms comes, that they will be able to use them.

MATTINGLY: There's a very big NATO Summit coming up in the coming days. I think President Biden will leave on the 9th and 10th. That's a very, very, very notable meeting of leaders in Lithuania.

Mike Lyons, Max Rose, good name drop on Semafor. Like I was going to say it no matter what.

TALCOTT: I had to do it.

MATTINGLY: But like, way to plug that in.

TALCOTT: Your story though. Okay.

MATTINGLY: We appreciate it, guys. Thank you very much.

CORNISH: All right, environmentalists have long pointed to livestock as a major contributor to climate change. Now, a new farming technique might flip that on its head and make cows part of the solution.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is ways to produce meat that is not good for the planet and there are ways to produce meat that is really good for the planet and that's the nuance that's been missing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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