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New Day

Soon: House Impeachment Managers Finish Presenting Their Case; CNN: Investigators Have Narrowed List of Suspects in Officer's Death. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired February 11, 2021 - 05:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Democratic House impeachment managers giving a chilling new look at January 6th.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know how close you came to the mob, but most of the public does not know how close these rioters came to you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They are going to try to argue that they believe Democrats are glorifying violence by trying to recreate what happened on January 6th. They're saying they're pulling it out of context.

[05:00:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're just hoping to drum up emotion and get their last shots in against President Trump.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The evidence that has been presented thus far is pretty damning.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Thursday, February 11th, 5:00 here in New York because we have that much to do.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: It's a special edition of NEW DAY.

CAMEROTA: It is a special edition because it's day three of Donald Trump's second impeachment trial. It begins soon with House impeachment managers concluding their opening arguments. They will have eight hours to show more evidence to Senate jurors of how President Trump incited the deadly insurrection at the capitol.

They've revealed a series of never seen before videos. For the first time, the American public saw vice president pence there and his family fleeing the Senate chamber moments before it was breached. Senator Tommy Tuberville confirming overnight that he told President Trump over the phone that Pence was being evacuated and still Donald Trump did nothing. Senate jurors watched as Nancy Pelosi Pelosi's staff ran to hide from the mob before the insurrectionists tried to break down the door.

Senators Mitt Romney and Chuck Schumer are caught on surveillance video narrowly escaping the mob.

BERMAN: Really amazing seeing Mitt Romney run like that. Clearly, Officer Goodman may very well have saved Mitt Romney's life. We have new reaction from senators this morning. We also have new reporting on what the House managers intend to present today.

Meanwhile, this is already having an impact outside the Senate chamber. CNN has learned that more than 120 former officials are actively discussing forming a new anti-Trump party, wing of the Republican Party. We're going to speak to one of the Republicans later this hour.

Let's go first to Lauren Fox on Capitol Hill. Lauren, even though, you know, so many Republicans, so many senators lived through this, you get the sense there's almost a level of shock this morning as the case is laid out before them.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Well, that's exactly right, John. And that is going to continue today as House managers make more of their case. They'll have another eight hours to present evidence on the Senate floor this afternoon.

And yes, this was a gripping, chilling account of what lawmakers went through but many of them just learning for the first time how narrowly they escaped an encounter with that mob.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FOX (voice-over): House prosecutors will finish arguments against former President Donald Trump today after using the second day of the impeachment trial to lay out their case giving the Senate jurors an unsettling replay of the deadly capitol insurrection.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): The evidence will be for you to see and hear and digest. The evidence will show you that ex-president Trump was no innocent bystander.

FOX: The presentation including never before seen video, providing a new view of the attack from both inside and outside. House prosecutors using footage, police body cameras and police radio audio as evidence.

OFFICER: But this is now effectively a riot.

REP. MADELEINE DEAN (D-PA): And so they came, draped in Trump's flag and used our flag, the American flag, to batter and to bludgeon, and at 2:30 I heard that terrifying banging on House chamber doors.

FOX: Watch the rioters searching the capitol for former Vice President Mike Pence. This surveillance video showing the moment secret service evacuated him down a stairwell.

DEL. STACEY PLASKETT (D-VI): After President Trump had primed his followers for months and inflamed the rallygoers that morning, it is no wonder that the vice president of the United States was the target of their wrath after Pence refused to overturn the election results. Listen to this man.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pence lied to us. He's a total treasonous pig and his name will be mud forever. Now, the real battle begins.

FOX: And another displays a close encounter for Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his security detail.

REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D-CA): They came within just yards of rioters and had to turn around.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where are you, Nancy? We're looking for you.

FOX: The rioters also targeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who was evacuated to an off site location.

PLASKETT: We know from the rioters themselves that if they had found Speaker Pelosi, they would have killed her.

PELOSI STAFFER: We need capitol police come into the hallway. They're banging on doors trying to find her.

FOX: Her staff barricading themselves within a conference room within her office suite as insurrectionists searched for the House speaker.

PLASKETT: One of the rioters is throwing him spotty three times against the door until he breaks open that outer door. Luckily, when faced with the inner door, he moves on.

FOX: Watch Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman approach Senator Mitt Romney in a hallway telling him to turn around to escape the mob.

REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D-CA): You know how close you came to the mob. Some of you, I understand, could hear them, but most of the public does not know how close these rioters came to you.

FOX: Managers blaming Trump for the attack, pointing to some of his words in the months before the riots.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: It's the only way we can lose in my opinion is massive fraud.

REP. JOE NEGUSE (D-CO): These false claims about election fraud, that was the drum beat being used to inspire, instigate and ignite them, to anger them.

FOX: Many Republicans saying while the rioters committed crimes, Trump did not.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): The not guilty vote is growing after today. I think most Republicans found the presentation by the House managers offensive and absurd.

FOX: Senate Democrats need 17 Republicans to join them, but for now, only five or six are likely to vote to convict Trump. SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): The evidence that has been presented thus

far is pretty damning. I just -- I don't see how Donald Trump could be re-elected to the presidency again.

FOX: The House prosecutors also replaying Trump's rally speech on January 6th and slamming the former president for his silence as rioters carried out the attack.

REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO (D-TX): Even when President Trump knew, he didn't do any of those things to stop the crowd. In fact, he did the opposite, he fueled the fire.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOX (on camera): And after that presentation by House managers yesterday, we asked Senator John Thune, a Republican in leadership what he thought. He said he thought the House managers were doing a good job of connecting the dots. After the House managers conclude their presentation today, we expect that the former president's defense team is going to have 16 hours to make their own case. There is still potential that this could all wrap on Saturday night.

But we don't know whether or not there will be witnesses. That remaining a key question this morning -- Alison.

CAMEROTA: Lauren, thank you very much for all of that.

Joining us now, CNN senior political analyst, John Avlon and Laura Jarrett, anchor of CNN's "EARLY START", who spent years covering the Justice Department.

John, seeing that surveillance video, security footage, I guess, of the lawmakers fleeing for their lives, I mean, and how close, how it could have gone so differently and so much more tragically.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It was such a powerful moment. This footage hadn't been seen before. And for Republicans, some Republicans, like we heard Lindsey Graham pretend that votes were increasing to acquit the president after seeing how close the violence to hitting home.

A lot of these Republicans have spent a career warning about mob violence. They finally got to experience it in person in a horrific, indelible way and yet it seems to be because it's aligned with their side, they want to find a way to excuse it, deflect it.

Make no mistake, these folks had murder on their mind, some of them, coming for Pelosi, coming for pence. How senators can't watch this and feel a sense of self-preservation and preservation of their branch of government is beyond me, because the dots were connected very clearly from incitement to insurrection.

BERMAN: Laura, what do they accomplish?

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR, "EARLY START": I think one of the things that they did most effectively was connect the dots as Lauren Fox said. The question all along had been, are you going to be able to trace the line from the former president's intent to the violence. And I think Delegate Plaskett really drove at home when she took it all the way back to stand back and stand by.

And then she brought up the fact that Trump supporters had tried to run a Biden campaign bus off the road back way before the January 6th riot. We all remember when that happened.

And what did the president do? He didn't just look away, he condoned it. He called these people patriots when it turned out that the FBI was investigating it. He tweeted that out.

And then it turns out that one of the people who organized that was at the January 6th rally and at the capitol. And so, I think connecting that through-line was really, really effective.

CAMEROTA: John, it seems that the House managers, the Democrats, are playing the long game. They recognize that this may not go their way, that the Republicans may not vote to convict. But they are doing it seems for the record, they're doing this for the historical record.

And what they have done is just show the entire arc as they see it from beginning to violence.

[05:10:03]

AVLON: Yeah, this is the most digitally documented violent attack in American history. And so, you can connect the dots in a way that was never possible before. And it is important to get the historical record.

And, frankly, you know, until we -- there are still a lot of unanswered questions that we need to fill in some of the blanks. They mentioned yesterday, for example, that it was vice -- Mike Pence who finally called in the National Guard, not the president. We'd like to know why that delay occurred when our capitol was under attack.

But that said, this is for history, but it's also so indelible if you are paying attention to the evidence. The question is why some senators are still acting like they are being a kid held over for school doing this under duress because this is an attack on our democracy and nobody can deny that. It is so visceral, so real. And they above all should know that.

JARRETT: But doesn't it always make you wonder why aren't Democrats calling witnesses? It doesn't appear as though they are.

AVLON: Yeah.

JARRETT: Why not call Officer Eugene Goodman? Everyone is so riveted by that video of Senator Romney racing for his life through the halls. Why not call the officer who saved his life? I mean, the video itself is compelling, but I think hearing firsthand testimony for someone who put his life on the line to save a senator is not something that you can turn around from. And if some of these Republicans are not going to vote to convict the

former president for whatever reason, that's a hard vote to take when you have an officer describing what he went through day.

BERMAN: I will also tell you it is a harder vote to take today, whatever happens with witnesses than it was yesterday. I continue to be surprised by the case that the House managers are presenting because we thought we had seen so much video. I continue to be surprised by the video that we hadn't seen yet. Seeing Mitt Romney run for his life is chilling.

AVLON: Yeah.

BERMAN: Seeing Chuck Schumer being escorted down a staircase is chilling. You know, here's Officer Goodman right now and you see Mitt Romney by the way is pretty nimble for his age.

AVLON: You seem very fixated on his running skills.

BERMAN: But to see him run away like that, to see Chuck Schumer, it is very visceral.

Now, so I was surprised by that emotion. But I'm also very surprised by the political positioning that the House managers have used. And I think that it is incredibly deft. I mean, I think it's incredibly deft. I mean, they have created --

JARRETT: Praising Pence left and right.

BERMAN: Exactly. Show Mike Pence video here so people can see this. This is Mike Pence being escorted down. What they've done is they created a choice, a blatant choice now for Republican senators. You can choose Mike Pence or you can choose Donald Trump. But you can't choose both here.

And I think that that is a very interesting and again effective strategy to make them go on the record to vote against the life of Vice President Mike Pence.

JARRETT: Yeah. I think exploiting that dichotomy, exploiting the fact that the GOP is a fractured party right now as you mentioned, some people talking about breaking off to create their own party, I think Charlie Dent mentioned this to Chris Cuomo last night. The idea here and you saw this also in the video of the chants of destroy the GOP, right? There is a fracture here that Trump was able to exploit but now, House managers want to use to their advantage too.

CAMEROTA: Yeah, quick, John.

AVLON: Yeah, no, the Pence connection is so clear. Particularly when you heard Trump -- you say Trump tweets that guy on a mega phone outside the capitol reads the tweet, and the chant to hang Mike Pence calling him a traitor emanates out. That to me is the clearest cause and effect. This argument that the House members are making and it's very powerful.

CAMEROTA: And then they build a noose.

BERMAN: And just to be clear, I did not see it coming for them to hold Mike Pence up as this paragon of virtue. This is a choice. It's an interesting legal and political choice that they have made here and they framed this in a new way. This is a new thing for Republican senators to have to deal with it.

CAMEROTA: I agree and we'll talk about this more.

Stand by, guys, because there are new clues in the death of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick and the search for his killer. All those details next.

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[05:18:29]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PLASKETT: These were not just hidden post in dark websites that Trump would not have seen. Quite the opposite. We know President Trump's team monitored these websites.

One poster wrote: Today I had a very difficult conversation with my children, that daddy might not come home from D.C.

Within a matter of hours, that post amassed 4,000 likes. President Trump had truly made them believe that their election had been stolen and that it was their patriotic duty to fight to steal it back. Patriotic, a term he used for those who gave violence to them and they were willing to say good-bye to their children for this fight. And their supporters didn't just rely on entering the capitol with guns haphazardly. They had maps of this building.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So this was a key part of the presentation. She was making the case that Trump's team knew of the violent rhetoric leading up to the insurrection. Now, Plaskett also revealed that the permit for the march to move from the ellipse to the U.S. capitol was not initially authorized. At least not until Trump's team got involved with the planning. So interesting to hear that.

John Avlon, Laura Jarrett Back with us.

And, Laura, this gets to a question Ross Garber raised on our air yesterday about what he thinks might or should happen next from the House managers.

[05:20:02]

That last direct time to prove that Donald Trump either knew, acquiesced or wanted the violence at the capitol. Have the managers made that case, what more do they need to do to make that case?

JARRETT: I think they started that process, but I bet that you will hear more. They will want to put a bow on this and drive it home. That not only was he on notice, but he celebrated it, he condoned it, that his team was aware, they were tracking things that were going online.

And Delegate Plaskett not only mentioned that the permit was changed, but if I'm not mistaken, the date was moved up. So that it would actually happen surrounding the certification of the votes not after inauguration. They wanted to do this early so that it would have an impact. And the question now I think for the House managers to drive home and next for the defense team is how do you connect Trump to the violence? How do you -- how do you make sure that it wasn't just that he wanted -- that his supporters would object, but that they would do it violently?

CAMEROTA: Well, I mean, 20 times he said fight -- fight like hell. Rudy Giuliani, trial by combat. I mean, John, I -- I don't know. Are these hard things to tie together? Doesn't it, is sort of in plain sight?

AVLON: Yeah.

CAMEROTA: It seems to me that you really have to have blinders on to hear no evil see no evil here.

AVLON: Well, partisan blinders are a way of life in Washington. But that's exactly right. You know, we've had contested elections before. We've never had a group, a mob attack the capitol. And that is the sort of basic fact pattern that you can't really get around.

But we -- you know, the House managers, because of digital details, can steps further than that in ways that are really key, right? Because we see Trump pre-baking the idea of the big lie and his supporters saying yep, if Biden wins, it's impossible, no way I'll accept it.

We can see the messages looking forward to the January 6th rally. After Trump spending more than $50 million to drive attention to it saying this message is not a protest, this is an act of war, we need to break glass.

And people showed up ready for combat. They showed up with tactical gear. So, it turned out that Trump supporters took them literally and seriously. They came -- some of them, with murder on their mind at the capital that day.

JARRETT: Well, also, how would Trump's team get around the fact that he was celebrating it saying remember this day, saying that Mike Pence let us down while all of this is going on.

So you can say maybe he didn't foresee the violence, but he certainly was celebrating it while it is happening. I don't know how they get around that part. They want to focus on him saying peacefully at that rally despite all the 20 times of saying fight, but they have so much evidence of what happened after. They're going to have to contend with that.

BERMAN: Well, Bruce Castor and Ted Cruz are arguing that Donald Trump can stand up there and say go swing a baseball bat, go throw wood through the glass at the capitol, and if he didn't say that, he should get off scot-free. That's what they're going to argue. You know that already.

So I'm curious to see if the House managers work to prebut that today as they finish up their arguments anymore. I'm also curious to see how they address what I believe is a nonissue in terms of free speech because you know that the former president's defense team will say, well, what he said was protected by free speech. The First Amendment, the Brandenburg clause. Again, he did not say to these people go break windows physically.

The reason that it is easily rebutted, Laura, is because this is an impeachment, because no politician has the guarantee of free speech in this way.

JARRETT: He is also the president of the United States, right? His speech has not been limited. And it's certainly not on that day. He had an enormous platform and still does in so many ways. I think part of the issue here is this legal concepts to get muddled into a process that really isn't legal.

It is a political process. There are no rules of evidence. We haven't heard from witnesses. There were no depositions. This is -- this is about what the senators can do here. This is -- there is no judge here. They really have a lot of leeway when it comes to that.

So yes, you will hear that from the defense attorneys. We know from reporting that they will point to their own video evidence of Democrats saying fight, Democrats not backing down when faced with losing elections. But those Democrats didn't incite violence over months and months and months. And it didn't lead to a violent insurrection.

AVLON: The what-aboutism is nonsense. It's just a complete nonsense. It has nothing to do with the issue at hand. And presidential leadership matters. Presidential words matter.

The fact that they are relying on a 1969 case involving the KKK did make a free speech argument has a certain symmetry, but this is ridiculous, the arguments they're putting forward, because everybody knows I think in your heart and hearts, if you've got to go that far, that if a Democratic president did exactly what Donald Trump did, Republican senators would be screaming bloody murder.

[05:25:07]

CAMEROTA: Oh, I mean, come on. I'm forever reminded of Benghazi, how they were outraged that four Americans were killed, and that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton didn't stop. Now, five Americans killed on U.S. soil and they can't be bothered to watch the presentation.

AVLON: That's right.

CAMEROTA: They say it's absurd.

Thank you both very much. Great to get your perspective.

JARRETT: Thanks, guys.

CAMEROTA: Now, this morning, a major development in the investigation into the death of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. Federal authorities say that thanks to new video, they have narrowed their list of suspects down to just a handful of people.

Investigators also have a new theory about how Officer Sicknick died. Initial reports suggest that he was struck with a fire extinguisher, but investigators say that that was not true. Their new theory is that he suffered a fatal reaction to an irritant-like bear spray that we can see in some of the videos being sprayed at officers.

Meanwhile, members of the U.S. Capitol Police plan to hold a vote of no confidence in their leadership later today.

OK. Coronavirus now. Vaccinations are accelerating across the country but not all eligible Americans can get one. We take a closer look at why.

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