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Inside Politics

Biden Announces Executive Actions on Guns, ATF Nominee; Biden: Modifications to Make Guns More Lethal Should be More Regulated. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired April 08, 2021 - 12:30   ET

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

MERRICK GARLAND, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: It's why the president has nominated David Chipman to be the next ATF Director.

[12:30:00]

Mr. Chipman has come up through the ranks, spending 25 years in the trenches fighting illegal gun trafficking and criminal enterprises. His extensive experience as an ATF agent will prove invaluable, and I look forward to working with him.

Looking out at many of you is not only a reminder of the tragic toll that gun violence takes on our communities, but also of the resilience and determination that it will take to make our community safer.

The Department of Justice shares your commitment, and that of the president and of the vice president, to stopping the plague of gun violence and saving the lives of those we love. Thank you.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Hello to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm John King in Washington; you're watching here the Rose Garden at the White House. Let's listen to President Biden.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Thank you, thank you, thank you, let's get to work.

KING: The president now heading back into the Oval Office with the vice president and the Attorney General of the United States. You saw him run off the stage and elbow bump there the former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, shot down in Tucson, gunned down in Tucson, her district when she served in Congress several years ago.

This one is one big important of many big important events today, also a dramatic testimony in the Derek Chauvin trial, we'll get back to that momentarily, but let's discuss what we just heard, new gun control measures and new promises from the President of the United States.

Joining us is our Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins, our Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash, and our Justice Correspondent Evan Perez. Kaitlan, let me start with you at the White House, proof that elections, it's a cliche but it's also true, elections do have consequences. This, a day 78 of the Biden presidency, the new president promising

several executive actions, enrolling executive actions designed to take some guns off the market within 30 or 90 days, they want some new regulations.

And also this is more aspirational because at the beginning of his remarks, I thought it was interesting, he acknowledged the tough political climate, but he said I will do what I can with executive power, and I wish Congress would finally act on several other measures.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN'S CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, he's still calling on Congress to act, but I think what we recognize and what he publicly conceded in that first press conference he had a few weeks ago is that it's going to be really tough to get any kind of legislation passed, and there is no appetite right now to get those House passed bills on Capitol Hill through the Senate.

And so what he is calling for there, you know, isn't really going to -- it's not likely to happen any time in the near future. So instead, he is focusing on these executive actions, but of course the problem with executive actions is they're pretty limited. And this is something that President Biden actually even argued about with Vice President Harris, of course, when they were both candidates on the stage about what you could do as president when it came to guns.

And so what he is doing here is he is proposing these new rules that are going to go through the Justice Department before they actually become rules. But one is he said - something that we did not actually hear from officials yesterday, which is that those ghost guns, those kits where you can essentially build a gun from scratch and they don't have serial numbers, you don't have to go through background checks for them, he said he does want them to be classified as firearms.

And so he wants to have this rule proposed here where they could try to curtail the proliferation of those. And the other rule is that they want to have a regulation for those stabilizing braces. This is something that we saw happen in that recent shooting in Colorado.

Basically, you can put it on a pistol and it makes your shot more accurate. And so he wants those to be regulated more often than they are right now. And, of course, the other steps are more symbolic, presenting these model red flag laws for other states to follow. And so these are really modest compared to what the actions that President Biden promised on the campaign trail.

And so where that goes from here, that remains to be seen because he did acknowledge there's a lot more work to be done, but these are the steps that he was taking after he was facing pressure to do something, to do anything on guns after those shootings we saw happen in Georgia and in Colorado.

KING: And Evan Perez, Kaitlan is absolutely right. There's only so much the federal government can do through executive action, but it does matter if you have a president who wants to talk about this issue. President Trump, back in his days, met several times with victims of gun violence and promised them quite a bit.

In the end, the administration only changed the regulations about those so-called bump stocks, one of them used in the Vegas shooting. When you have a president, a vice president, an attorney general, and now a new Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, assuming Mr. Chipman is confirmed, who himself is a gun control advocate. How much of a difference does that make, leadership at the top of these important agencies?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN'S JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, yes. Look, if you have a president who says he wants to do it and will not yield to the pressure from groups like the NRA, then you can have certain things done, certainly you can do the executive actions.

[12:35:00]

But I'll tell you, John, you know, a couple things that come to mind. Dave Chipman, who is the president's nominee to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, he is not going to have an easy time going through nomination. We expect people like Joe Manchin, people - some senators, perhaps, from pro-gun states are going to think twice before voting for someone who is out there calling for strict restrictions on guns.

That's going to be a tough fight for the administration. And clearly they're ready to make that fight. So we'll see how that unfolds. And one of the things that the president is talking about is one of those arm braces, a regulation for that, which, as Kaitlan pointed out, the shooter in Boulder was using to make his pistol more - shoot more accurately.

What - that was a regulation that actually the Justice Department tried to put into place just in the last few months of the Obama -- I'm sorry, of the Trump administration, and they faced tremendous pushback from the gun lobby, from gun rights groups, and they withdrew it.

So the idea that they're going to try to do that now, I suspect that you're going to get this similar pushback, and we'll see how they can -- how they can bring that about. But as you said, if you have leadership, here the Justice Department at the White House that wants to do something, you can get something done.

KING: And that's the question, Dana Bash, you've been through this many times, your time covering the White House, your times covering Capitol Hill is do you have sustained focus on the issue because - let's just look, and we have a map here. This is just in the two weeks, the two weeks, the last two weeks of March, 21 mass shootings across the United States during two weeks in March, two weeks in March.

The president of the United States himself noting 850 people were shot in the United States of America, victims of gun violence, in the one week between Georgia and Boulder, Colorado. And we can put up this polling, this is from ABC News and Ipsos back in late March. What's the higher priority, enacting new gun laws or protecting the right of gun owners?

It's a 66% issue out in the country right now. So out in America, there is support for much, maybe not everything, but much of what the president just talked about. The question is, in this town, it always gets stuck in the weeds.

And, you know, Kaitlan made the argument, Evan again, you look at a five-vote Democratic majority in the house, you look at a 50/50 senate, you look at the mid-term elections coming up and you would expect the president and the Democrats would pull back. Others say no, that's actually the moment to be bold.

DANA BASH, CNN'S CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's exactly right. And that kind of polling that you showed is very similar to the polling that the White House used to push, along party lines, this is a different issue, they can't do this, the COVID bill. And so the approach inside the White House has been regardless of the fact that things are stuck in partisan in Washington, look at how real people in the real country feel about it.

The issue is, you mentioned it and our friends at Capitol Hill and Justice mentioned it, the NRA and gun rights groups. President Trump, when he was in the White House meeting with families after so many of these horrible tragedies, he came pretty close, and we all know what stopped him. It was the NRA; it was a conversation with the NRA.

It is -- this is a prime example of groups that exist and raise money off of the idea that they are going to stop something in this case, and that is from their -- from the perspective of 60% of Americans, common sense gun control. So unless there is real leadership from the Biden administration, and even with that, it is going to be incredibly hard.

He was part of the Obama administration, I'm listening to former President Obama's memoir, I mean he talks about how impossible it was, even given Gabby Giffords, one of their colleagues being shot, what happened in Newtown and so on and so forth, and not much has changed even with that polling.

KING: Even with that polling, not much has changed in this town. The question is are you - you're right about the Trump administration days, but the NRA was able to show up at the gates and get into the Oval Office the next day after those meetings in those days. That won't happen now, and if we can - we will see. We will see as this plays out.

Dana Bash, Kaitlan Collins, Evan Perez, grateful for the reporting and insights on that big important event at the White House. I'm going to take you now back live to Minneapolis, the prosecution still questioning a very important witness today, Dr. Martin Tobin, let's listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CALL)

JERRY BLACKWELL, PROSECUTION TEAM: So if you might recall Mr. Floyd's last words, you know, I can't breathe. DR. MARTIN TOBIN, PULMONOLOGY EXPERT: Right.

BLACKWELL: Are those words significant to you as a pulmonologist?

TOBIN: Yes, that - I mean, obviously, they're important, different ways. One is complaining to you of difficulty with breathing, but they're also telling me that at that time, when he's saying please, I can't breathe, he's -- we know at that point he has oxygen in his brain.

[12:40:00]

But -- and again, it's a perfect example of how it gives you a huge false sense of security because very shortly after that, we're going to see that he has a major loss of oxygen in the way that he moves his leg.

And so it tells you how dangerous is the concept of, if he can breathe - or if he can speak, he can breathe. Yes, that is true on the surface, but highly misleading. Very - a very dangerous mantra to have out there.

BLACKWELL: So if I'm hearing you correctly, when he says I can't breathe, that shows his brain is alert.

TOBIN: Yes.

BLACKWELL: But then immediately thereafter his brain wasn't.

TOBIN: Correct.

BLACKWELL: And did you see or is there anything in the video that you can show the jurors that they can see also that would point to the fact that his brain was no longer alert?

TOBIN: Yes.

BLACKWELL: Let me pull up exhibit 47, already in evidence, at 20:24. So I'm going to play a clip for you, Dr. Tobin and then tell the jurors what they see afterward.

TOBIN: Yes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNKNOWN MALE: (Inaudible)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TOBIN: And so there's a key finding that you're seeing here, and that is when you see his leg going up, and you have to keep in mind he's prone, so he's facing down, so this is his leg coming up backwards. And so that's what we call, as clinicians, that's an extension movement of the leg.

And that is something we see when somebody suffers major brain - lack of oxygen. And it tells us at that point he's having what are sometimes called a myoclonic seizure, sometimes called a hypoxic seizure. There's different terms that are used, but really they all amount to saying that you're seeing here fatal injury to the brain from a lack of oxygen.

BLACKWELL: It's sometimes also called an anoxic seizure.

TOBIN: It has all of these different words. There's a lot of different words used, but they all come down to the same thing, that it is that at that point the brain is responding to the drastically low level of oxygen that's present.

BLACKWELL: And does the fact of an anoxic seizure reflect damage to the brain?

TOBIN: It indicates severe damage to the brain.

BLACKWELL: And the reflex that we saw with the legs coming up, is that an involuntary reaction?

TOBIN: It's a - it's an involuntary reaction. I mean, there's a lot of different medical terms that we apply to it, but the bottom line is that you're seeing that the -- the leg jumps up like that as a result of a fatally low level of oxygen going to the brain.

BLACKWELL: So doctor, we talked about the brain injury. The - you also told us earlier about low levels of oxygen potentially causing pulseless electrical activity.

TOBIN: Yes.

BLACKWELL: And is that also, then, evidence of low oxygen?

BLACKWELL: Right. So, I mean, there - when you have a low level of oxygen, that's going to show up in the brain, and it's also going to show up in the heart. And when it shows up in the heart, it's going to cause the heart to beat abnormally.

And the particular way that it happened in Mr. Floyd was he developed a particular arrhythmia called a PEA, which is a pulseless electrical activity, where we're seeing - there's electricity in the heart, but it's not resulting in any mechanical force, and so that's why it has that name.

And so it's the low level of oxygen is producing both. We don't see the PEA, the pulseless electrical activity, arrhythmia until that's shown up on the EKG in the ambulance. So it's much later that we see the evidence of it in terms of display. But here we're seeing huge evidence in terms of the leg. The leg is crucial here because this is -- this is the time that you're -- the first time you're seeing there is majorly oxygen damage.

BLACKWELL: So, did we reach a point where Mr. Floyd couldn't speak due to low oxygen? Was there any correlation, also, to a narrowing of the airways that prevented his - being able to speak?

TOBIN: Yes, as well.

[12:45:00]

BLACKWELL: I want to show you what's marked as exhibit 934, 936 and 933. And just tell us what are these images in general?

TOBIN: So we're seeing again the same MRI, but at a different view of it that we looked at before.

BLACKWELL: Your honor, I offer exhibits 934, 936 and 933.

CAHILL: Any objection?

NELSON: No, your honor.

CAHILL: 934, 936 and 933 are received.

BLACKWELL: So doctor, tell us what we see here, starting with the first -

TOBIN: Right. So this is the same MRI that you saw before. But what's full -- what you're being -- your attention is drawn to by the yellow arrow is the vocal cords, and the vocal cords is simply how you speak. So to speak, you must inhale; you must take air into your lungs, and then when you let the air out, you're going to vibrate those little vocal cords there and that's what makes the sound of speech.

And so here we see the size of the windpipe, the trachea, and this becomes important in terms of speech because our knowledge about the influence of the size of the trachea, of the windpipe for speech, is from patients who have had an endotracheal tube in place, and then it develops scarring after that.

And so, as a result of the scarring, we know what is the point of how much scarring in your windpipe will prevent you from speaking. And so these are just the dimensions, so as you know what is the size of the normal trachea. It's between a quarter and a dime, as you can see here, in terms of the diameters.

BLACKWELL: Next slide, please (ph).

TOBIN: And here is when the -- those coins have been shrunk to 15%. And even when the trachea has narrowed all the way down to 15 percent, you are still able to speak. Even when the hole through your windpipe is just this size, as I've shown here, where I've shrunk the size of the coins, you are still able to speak.

So it tells you how dangerous it is to think, well, if he can speak, he's doing okay because at this point you will be able to speak, but again if there is a small increase in the amount of narrowing here, not only will you not be able to speak, you won't be able to breathe, you won't be able to live. And so it's a very dangerous thing to think that because you're able to speak you're doing okay.

BLACKWELL: And so, doctor, you're not able to speak, breathe or live once the airway narrows to below 15%? TOBIN: Correct. Once you - I mean, if you go from the 15 - 15 percent,

you'll still able to speak. And then as it gets lower from that initially, you'll be struggling and then at some stage you just won't be able to do anything.

BLACKWELL: Red (ph), if we could show exhibit 940. It's already admitted.

TOBIN: So again, this is exactly -- because this is the same experiment I showed you before. And it just so happens, this is pure coincidence, it's at 85 percent here, looking at that top curve, and that's the same number that we showed you on the previous - on the MRI. This is pure coincidence.

But you can see here, once you're up at 85 percent, that the work of breathing is enormous, it's a 7 and a half fold increase. And then as that -- and narrowing would get further and further, then the work will become unbearable. So again, it just emphasizes at the point where you can't speak, and you are indeed troubled.

BLACKWELL: Doctor, I'd like to transition now from talking about the physiology of breathing to talk about your work as a clinician, taking care of patients with respiratory troubles. Does that experience factor into your opinions today also?

TOBIN: Yes.

BLACKWELL: Did you do anything to try to understand Mr. Floyd's actual rate of breathing?

TOBIN: Yes, I did.

BLACKWELL: Why was that important to do?

TOBIN: Because a major part of my work as a lung specialist is looking at people's breathing. You get an awful lot of information by looking at how they breathe, by looking at how they use their chest wall; all of this is extremely informative.

[12:50:00]

And at the lowest level, one of the simplest things to do that is especially informative is simply to count how many breaths somebody takes in. It's one of the vital signs, like with blood pressure, pulse rate, temperature, is the respiratory rate. It's one of the signs that tells us, and it gives us a lot of clues as to what is happening inside the body.

BLACKWELL: Is this something you've done before?

TOBIN: I've done it millions of times.

BLACKWELL: Do you train others on how to do it?

TOBIN: I've trained nurses, respiratory therapists, medical students, doctors in how to do it. BLACKWELL: And so you're accounting the breaths. Do you observe the

muscles and things also?

TOBIN: You separately from counting the breaths, you're going to look at the different muscles they're using, whether they're using their sternum mastoid, whether what type of bucket handle action they have, what type of pump handle; you're looking at all of this in a glance. I mean with somebody as old as me I can see all of this very rapidly.

BLACKWELL: So did you take this clinical experience and apply it to your observations of Mr. Floyd's breathing in this case on the videos?

TOBIN: Yes, I did.

BLACKWELL: Was there video evidence from which you could take measurements?

TOBIN: Yes, there is.

BLACKWELL: I want to show exhibit 43 that's already in evidence. So I want to play this, doctor, and afterward tell us what we're seeing. So in a moment it will start.

TOBIN: So if you focus down here on where he is, the handcuff isn't - where his arm is close to his black shirt is the best place to see, and you can count out his respiratory rate. So you're seeing that he's making a respiratory rate here, then another, and so we need to play it back because I needed to tell you first where to focus. If you focus down there you will see - be able to count out the rates.

BLACKWELL: All right, we will play it once more so that you can count the rates so -

TOBIN: OK, thank you.

BLACKWELL: - we can see what you're referring to.

TOBIN: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

BLACKWELL: So that was a - roughly a 17 second clip.

TOBIN: Right.

BLACKWELL: And you counted seven or eight breaths.

TOBIN: Eight - Between seven and eight, yes.

BLACKWELL: And did you use this to calculate a rate of respiration?

TOBIN: Yes, because I mean, it's simple. Once you have 19 seconds and you count out the number of breaths you have here, and if you say you count out seven breaths, that will come out at a respiratory rate of 22.

BLACKWELL: Is that number, the respiratory rate of 22, significant to this case. TOBIN: It's extremely significant.

BLACKWELL: Why is that?

TOBIN: Because one of the things in this case is the question of Fentanyl, and if Fentanyl is having an effect and is causing depression of the respiratory centers, the centers that control breathing, that's going to result in a decrease in the respiratory rate.

And it's shown that with Fentanyl, you expect a 40 percent reduction in the respiratory rate. So with Fentanyl, his respiratory rate should be down at around 10. Instead of that, it's right in the middle of normal, at 22.

BLACKWELL: So you didn't see a depressed rate of respiration or breathing rate in Mr. Floyd.

TOBIN: No, it's normal.

BLACKWELL: And so what does it tell you, bottom line with respect to Fentanyl, as relates to Mr. Floyd?

TOBIN: Exactly. With - in terms of Fentanyl, the major -- one of the major changes you see in Fentanyl is a slowing of the respiratory rate. So -- and again, we would be expecting a 40 percent reduction in the respiratory rate with Fentanyl. The normal respiratory rate is 17 breaths per minute, plus or minus 5, so that would mean a normal respiratory rate of between 12 and 22. That's the normal range of respiratory rate.

And so if it was with Fentanyl, you'd be expecting a respiratory rate above ten, instead that you counted here yourself, and you can see when you counted yourself that the respiratory rate is 22.

[12:55:00]

So basically it tells you there - that is - there isn't Fentanyl on board that is affecting his respiratory centers, it's not having an effect on his respiratory centers.

BLACKWELL: So Mr. Floyd's respiratory rate was normal at 22 just before he lost consciousness?

TOBIN: Correct.

BLACKWELL: So the jury - the jury may have heard some other information in the case about the Fentanyl related to an elevated carbon dioxide level in Mr. Floyd's body in the emergency room. Was that significant to you?

TOBIN: Yes, that's very significant as well.

BLACKWELL: How so?

TOBIN: Because he's reported to have a PaC02 - sorry, I take it back. He's reported to have a carbon dioxide level in the arterial blood in the emergency room of 89. That's a very high level of carbon dioxide. And so you have to take into account what are the factors that might have led to that. And there's particularly important factors in Mr. Floyd to explain why his carbon dioxide was found at 89 in the emergency room.

BLACKWELL: So doctor, would you first tell us, what would normal have been for carbon dioxide levels?

TOBIN: The normal carbon dioxide level in you or me is 35 to 45 millimeters of mercury, that's the normal. You don't need the millimeters of mercury stuff, but they're the units that are given in the hospital chart.

BLACKWELL: So you said that there were significant factors in the case of Mr. Floyd. Would you help the jury understand what those were?

TOBIN: Yes, the important factors are that we know that he made his own last spontaneous effort to breathe at 20:25:16. After that, you can look at the videos, and you see he makes no effort to breathe. There's - he makes no breath. The last breath he took was at 20:25:16.

Then we know after that he stayed on the street for another three minutes or so, then he's placed into the ambulance, and we know that in the ambulance they attempted to put in an airway, an IGEL, and you can see that on Officer Lane's body cam.

You can see all of that happening. And then you can see the time at which they actually successfully inserted the airway and when they gave him the first breath. And that is a gap of nine minutes and 50 seconds from when he last took a breath.

BLACKWELL: And why is that significant?

TOBIN: That's very significant because we can calculate what is the rate of increase in the carbon dioxide in somebody who doesn't breathe. If somebody doesn't take a breath, carbon dioxide increases at a predictable rate, and that rate is up to 4.9 millimeters of mercury per minute that it increases.

And so he has not taken a breath for nine minutes and 50 seconds, so you would expect, just on that basis, that his carbon dioxide level will go up by 49. So you add 49 to the normal values of 35 to 45, and then you add that and you're going to get a value of between 89 and above. And so it comes out exactly - virtually identical to the value that they found in the emergency room of 89.

BLACKWELL: So doctor, what's the punch line with respect to that? What does it tell us?

TOBIN: The significance of all of that is it's a second reason why you know Fentanyl is not causing the depression of his respiration. What you're seeing is that the increase in his carbon dioxide that is found in the emergency room is solely explained by what you expect to happen in somebody who doesn't have any ventilation given to them for nine minutes and 50 seconds. It's completely explained by that. BLACKWELL: So when a person, then, is not breathing, then carbon

dioxide would naturally continue to build up in the body?

TOBIN: Yes.

BLACKWELL: And that's what matches what was seen in the O.R. for Mr. Floyd?

TOBIN: Precisely.

BLACKWELL: Now, you've said that there were other things that were significant that were related to the rate of respiration that we talked about, Fentanyl.

TOBIN: Right.

BLACKWELL: Was there anything else?

TOBIN: Yes. The other things -- there's two other things that are very important to the respiratory rate because you saw it with your own eyes.