Return to Transcripts main page

Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Justice Stephen Breyer's Big Announcement; Russia and Ukraine Agree to Continue Ceasefire Talks; Fed Keeps Rates Unchanged But Signals Hikes Are Coming Soon; U.S. Written Response to Russia Sets "Diplomatic Path Forward"; Munich Archbishop's Response to Priest Sex Abuse Report; North Korea Conducts Sixth Missile Test of 2022. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired January 27, 2022 - 05:00   ET

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

[05:00:30]

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer making it official today at the White House, announcing his retirement from the bench. Who will be his replacement?

Russia and Ukraine agree to continue cease-fire talks as the U.S. pushes for a solution to ease tensions there. What this means for the diplomatic path forward.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: A nor'easter bomb cyclone with the power of a hurricane will unleash snow and blizzard-like conditions this weekend. What you need to do to stay safe.

It was a simple question for this top doctor wouldn't answer. Why Democrats walked out of his confirmation hearing and refused to vote.

JARRETT: Good morning, everyone. It is Thursday, January 27th. It is 5:00 a.m. here in New York. Thanks so much for getting an early start with us. I'm Laura Jarrett.

ROMANS: Hey, Laura. I'm Christine Romans. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world.

JARRETT: We begin here with a thunderbolt in Washington, D.C. The retirement of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. The liberal justice is expected to formally announce his decision at a White House event with President Biden as early as today. More on that in just a moment.

Now, as for his replacement, the president has promised to make history here, naming the first Black woman to the high court. ROMANS: Such a move could serve as a political lifeline for Democrats

hoping to motivate the base before midterm elections this fall. But for now, many in the party are breathing a sigh of relief. At 83, Breyer was the oldest member of the court and had been under intense pressure from the left to step down while Mr. Biden still has a path to replace him.

While the president will likely get his pick on the bench, the country now faces what is sure to be another bitter Supreme Court battle.

CNN's Jessica Schneider starts us off this morning in Washington.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Christine and Laura, this is a retirement progressive groups have been pushing for the past year. But Justice Breyer brushed aside those calls last June, but now with just months until the midterms and with Republicans promising they would thwart a Biden pick if they win, Justice Breyer has potentially injected some political calculation into this decision to retire.

Justice Breyer has been on the Supreme Court for 27 years. But he was in politics before becoming a judge. He worked on the Senate Judiciary Committee for the Democrats, and investigated Watergate in the 1970s. So he understands the political realities of this situation.

Justice Breyer also said over the past year that he would consider two things when deciding whether to leave, his health and the court. So with no known health issues, it is clear that the court's future is his main reason for leaving. He's talked repeatedly about the importance of the integrity of the court, and the danger of public faith in the court eroding if it became too political.

But there is probably some political calculation in this decision. Justice Breyer will stay on for at least the end of the term, which ends in June, because, of course, there is still a lot of work for the court to do. Huge issues are pending, including the fate of abortion rights and gun rights.

But now the real work begins at the White House, presumably they have been vetting candidates, they eventually have to choose a successor for Justice Breyer. President Biden did say on the campaign trail he would choose a black female as his Supreme Court pick. There are several names at the forefront of that list, including 51-year-old Ketanji Brown Jackson. She's currently on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Also 45-year-old Leondra Kruger who's on the California Supreme Court.

Democrats are already pledging to move swiftly on any confirmation, they're pointing to the last justice that was put on the Supreme Court, named by President Trump, Amy Coney Barrett, and her lightning fast confirmation process, just four weeks.

So Democrats are looking to mirror that for this successor to Justice Breyer -- Christine, Laura. (END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: All right. Jessica, thank you for that.

President Biden and Justice Breyer are expected to appear together at the White House later today. The two men go back a long way, as you can see here. Then Senator Biden, chairman of the judiciary committee, questioning Breyer at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing back in 1994.

JARRETT: Here to help us put this historic moment in context this morning, CNN White House correspondent John Harwood and Kevin Russell, a partner at Goldstein and Russell, who clerked for Justice Breyer and regularly argues before the court.

Good morning to you both. So great to have you.

John, I want to start with you, the official line from the White House is that it is up to a justice to decide when to step down, but this in reality may be the president's only chance for a Supreme Court nominee. He needed this badly.

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Look, this is something that is welcome to the White House, as Justice Breyer told our colleague Joan Biskupic last year, he doesn't live on Pluto.

[05:05:09]

He understands the political process, as Jess Schneider said in that piece, he understands the political process. He's getting a lot of heat, nobody wanted to repeat on the Democratic side what happened with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who decided to stay, even though she was quite elderly, and ended up passing away during Donald Trump's term and as you just heard, in four weeks they -- Republicans pushed through Amy Coney Barrett, tilted court from 5-4 conservative court to a 6-3 conservative court.

Justice Breyer is making sure, he's 83 years old, in good health, but you never know what's going to happen. He's now making sure that Joe Biden is going to be able to appoint someone who can be on that court for decades.

It's welcome also for the White House in the sense that this is a fight that they're going to win, and it is a fight that will unite the Democratic Party. As he has political trouble, one of the problems is Democrats see him not succeeding, he's got some choices that can succeed.

I think the early front-runner is going to be Ketanji Brown Jackson, what was just months confirmed with 53 votes, that is all 50 Democrats and three Republicans, Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham and Lisa Murkowski. That is a sign that she could win confirmation again.

And so, again, Joe Biden has now got it fight after so many fights that he couldn't win that he can. ROMANS: You know, Kevin Russell, you clerked for Justice Breyer in

the mid-1990s. So, you know him well. What do you think tipped the scales for him to retire?

KEVIN RUSSELL, FORMER LAW CLERK FOR JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER: Well, I think he's publicly said for a long time he didn't want to die on the court. He is getting up in years. I agree with other folks who suggested that he doesn't want to have the experience that Justice Ginsburg had. He cares deeply about the court and about his legacy at the court and I'm sure doesn't want to be replaced by somebody who has dramatically different views about the law than he does.

At the same time, I'm sure it pains him that his retirement timing is going to be perceived as at least in part motivated by these political considerations. He more than hardly, more than any other justice, believes and wants the public to understand that the court is not a partisan political institution. And he thinks that the public's perception of it as a political institution undermines its legitimacy and he's been very concerned that this is undermining the court's ability to play its role as the arbiter of disputes between president and congress and as the final interpreter of the Constitution's protection for individual rights.

JARRETT: Hey, John, we all remember how fast Justice Amy Coney Barrett got confirmed. Do you think Chuck Schumer will be able to pull off the same deal here with whoever President Biden picks to replace Justice Breyer?

HARWOOD: Well, he certainly wants to do it fast, Laura, but he doesn't need to do it as fast as Mitch McConnell did with Amy Coney Barrett because there was a looming deadline of the election, which compelled the Republicans to act fast. But Chuck Schumer is using that as a precedent to say we can move this very quickly. I think if they do it by the end of the Supreme Court term in June or July, that will allow Justice Breyer to serve out his term and then let the successor take his place.

Kevin makes a very good point about partisanship. I understand the reluctance of Justice Breyer to have the court perceived that way. Sadly, that ship has sailed and the public views the court as a pretty partisan institution, for very good reason, because it acts as a partisan institution and the partisan machinery is going to gear up and it is going to give Joe Biden a nominee probably by the end of the spring.

ROMANS: Kevin, that do you think Justice Breyer's lasting legacy will be?

RUSSELL: Well, I think, you know, his judicial philosophy is almost unique on the court in that he isn't a strict textualist. He's not a strict originalist. It's hard to pigeon hole his philosophy other than to say he cares deeply about how the court works as part of a broader government that is supposed to work for people.

So he is deeply interested in the practical consequences of the court's decisions on how the government works, on how people's lives are improved, in a way that almost nobody left on the court is. He doesn't think you can define the meaning of a statute or the Constitution just by staring deeply into the text. He wants to know how it is going to work in the real world and he cares about the opinions of others, expert agencies and the government, his colleagues, and even law clerks.

He was very interested in talking through legal issues with just about anybody who would listen, because he just deeply loves the practice of being a judge.

ROMANS: Okay, Kevin Russell, thank you so much. So nice to see you this morning.

John Harwood, stay with us. We got a lot more to discuss.

Like the Federal Reserve, gearing up to raise interest rates soon. The Central Bank, it did not hike rates Wednesday, but noted the economy is now strong enough to end easy money policies.

[05:10:05]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEROME POWELL, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIR: The economy no longer needs sustained high levels of monetary policy support. That's why we're fashion out our asset purchases in ways we expected will soon be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Yeah, the Fed here is an inflation fighting mode, plans to raise interest rates multiple times this year, first one likely in March. Rates have been near zero since the pandemic began. The Fed slashed rates in March 2020 to help the economy. Higher interest rates will help combat persistent inflation, which Powell expects to cool over the course of this year.

On Main Street, this affects everyone, higher rates affect borrowing, raising costs for mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, student loans, mortgage rates back to pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, Wall Street tumbled after policy suggested the Fed may hike rates faster than investors expect. He noted the Fed had quite a bit of room to raise rates before it would hurt the U.S. economy.

All right. Coming up, Secretary of State Antony Blinken says that the U.S. delivered a response to Moscow's demands amid military buildup near Ukraine. How Russia's responding.

JARRETT: Plus, Stormy Daniels set to take the witness stand against her former lawyer, Michael Avenatti. What will happen in court today while he's defending himself?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:15:40] JARRETT: The U.S. has delivered its written response to Russia aimed at deterring an invasion of Ukraine. Secretary of State Tony Blinken says he expects to have a discussion with the Russian foreign minister in the coming days.

CNN's Nic Robertson joins us live from Moscow on this.

Nic, good morning. So, what exactly was the U.S. message in this written document?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yeah, this was the message that was designed to say that NATO was keeping an open door, but there were areas that the U.S. and Russia could actually have discussion, you know, on possible arms control agreements, on possible reciprocity, on troop movements, et cetera, et cetera. We have now in the past few minutes heard from the Kremlin spokesman that President Putin now has this in his hands, that he has read it.

But the readout we're getting from the Kremlin is has a hint of dissatisfaction in it. They are saying -- the spokesman is saying that it doesn't really seem to take into account Russia's real concerns here, which was NATO and its open door policy and Ukraine's ability to join NATO in the future. So first blush here, the Kremlin saying that the president of the country is processing it, but it doesn't appear to have everything that they wanted.

But the spokesman also said, but let's not rush to make a judgment. He said it is going to take a little while to process our opinion and our position on this. He said there will be a fairly quick response. He said as well that that response may not come today.

Also, the Russian government hasn't yet decided, he said, whether they're going to make this response publicly. They may just make it directly to the United States without going public with their position. They have been very public up to now. And indeed the foreign minister has said today again that Russia would respect the United States' wish that this written response would not be made public.

However, Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister, also said that the document that the United States returned to the Russians had been shared with NATO and shared with Ukraine, and therefore in his view it would be very likely that the document would be leaked. Senior State Department officials last week thought that it potentially could be leaked by the Russian side, too.

JARRETT: All right. Nic Robertson, thank you for your analysis as always.

ROMANS: So Russian and Ukrainian negotiators agreed to keep working toward peace in eastern Ukraine, working toward a permanent cease- fire. Diplomats put a positive spin on four nation talks in Paris Wednesday, emphasizing the common goal of unconditional peace.

CNN's Sam Kiley is live in Kyiv for us tracking developments.

You know, Sam, negotiators report progress here and the parties will meet again in a couple of weeks.

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it is potentially rather confusing for everybody, this in say sense is a side show to the main event. You got the Russian pressure on Ukraine, the potential for an invasion or expansion of the area that is being talked about in those peace talks that you referred to. That's called the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, which has been seized effectively by Russian-backed rebels. Now, there was a cease-fire agreement signed in Minsk that has been observed largely in its breach.

It isn't a particularly hot war, that people are dying on an almost weekly basis, and the effort being made in this multilateral talks known as the Normandy process is to try to dial down the violence there, get a cease-fire in place, which might in a sense symbolically help the wider issue, which is the persistent and the view of the United States imminent threat of an invasion of the wider Ukraine, in an effort by Vladimir Putin's Russia to seize yet more territory in their neighbor.

ROMANS: All right. Sam Kiley, walking us through all the developments. Thank you, sir.

Laura?

JARRETT: Happening right now, Munich's archbishop is responding to that disturbing report of sex abuse within the Catholic Church. We have a live report on that next.

ROMANS: And the man who wants to be Florida's surgeon general can't answer a basic question about COVID. That's just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:54:23]

JARRETT: Welcome back.

In Germany right now, the archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, is responding to a devastating sex abuse report that came out last week describing how the church handled abuse cases for over 70 years. The report named former Pope Benedict for his failure to act in four specific cases, and Marx himself who was accused of mishandling two other cases.

CNN's Delia Gallagher joins us live on this, live from Rome on this story.

So, Delia, what is the defense here from the archbishop?

DELIA GALLAGHER, CNN VATICAN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Laura, this press conference has just started. He's just begun to speak. This is a cardinal who is extremely important, not only is the archbishop of Munich and he himself accused of mishandling two cases of sex abuse during his tenure, but he's a close adviser to Pope Francis.

[05:25:11]

He's generally very popular and progressive cardinal in Germany. As I said, he's just begun to speak. Here is a few of the things which he's had to say about this report. He said it represents the dark side of the church, the church has been a place of fear and harm, the report holds up a mirror to the Catholic Church and is part of an honest view.

The cardinal is one who actually commissioned this report. It was done by an independent law firm in Germany. But the report found over 75- year period there were nearly 500 victims of sexual abuse. And, of course, as we know also in that report Benedict XVI is accused of mishandling four cases.

Now, what Cardinal Mrx has to do in this press conference is respond, obviously, to the two personal cases of mishandling that he is accused of. But he also has to set out a framework for the archdiocese about how they're going to move forward, and re-instill some trust in the Catholic Church in Germany -- Laura.

JARRETT: All right. Delia, thank you so much for staying on top of this one for us.

ROMANS: All right. Breaking overnight, North Korea escalating tensions with another missile test. This is the sixth one this month. The South Korean military says two suspected short range ballistic missiles were launched from the city of Hamhung, into waters off North Korea's East Coast.

Will Ripley following this for us. He has been to North Korea more than just about anybody in the media.

North Korea's neighbors, Will, aren't happy. Japan's prime minister said this say U.N. violation. South Korean military tracking these launches and says it maintains readiness here. What do we know?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We haven't seen this kind of missile testing binge by Kim Jong-un, Christine, since at least 2019. We haven't seen anything on this scale. This could be North Korea's, if not their busiest, one of their busiest months ever for ballistic missile tests. Six weapons tests, sometimes launching two missiles at once, talking about ballistic missiles from the ground, ballistic missiles from a train, cruise missiles launched two days ago, and earlier this month, North Korea launched hypersonic missiles, which have glide vehicles on the warheads allowing either nuclear or conventional warheads to make unexpected turns, making them almost impossible for U.S. missile defense systems to shoot down.

We have been speaking with analysts asking why is North Korea doing this, why now, just about a week before the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics, hosted by their neighbor and their patron economically and politically, China? And analysts are saying this very well could be a message from Kim Jong-un to the Biden administration that they want to be taken seriously, that they want negotiations on their terms, to lift sanctions. In fact, the Biden administration imposed some new sanctions on North

Korea after those purported hypersonic missile tests earlier this month. North Korea said it will only cause their response to be even stronger. This is really raising questions, Christine, about what could potentially happen during the Winter Olympics in North Korea.

ROMANS: Yeah, absolutely.

RIPLEY: -- Beijing, but by North Korea during the Winter Olympics.

ROMANS: I get it, I get it. Quick question about the Biden administration, Antony Blinken, President Biden, what is the next move on this?

RIPLEY: Well, they were talking actually overnight, Antony Blinken and secretary of state -- sorry, the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi. They were talking about not only the issue of North Korea, but also talking about Ukraine, and talking about U.S. involvement here in Taiwan.

From the Chinese perspective, they want the region to have as little militarization as possible this applies to the Korean peninsula and Ukraine as well, where China said that Russia security concerns are reasonable and need to be resolved as quickly as possible. On the issue of Taiwan, they said, Christine, as they said repeatedly, the U.S. is playing with fire if it tries to move too close to this self- rule democratic island.

ROMANS: All right. Thank you so much. Nice to see you, Will. Thank you.

All right, ahead, an unvaccinated Sarah Palin returning to the restaurant that didn't check her vaccine card, which she obviously wouldn't have because she's not vaccinated. Why she keeps dining out with COVID.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)