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January 6th Panel Suffers Setbacks as Trump Aides Stonewall; South African Doctor Treating Omicron Patients Shares Trends; Arrest Made after FOX News Christmas Tree Set on Fire; Leaked Video: Boris Johnson Had Party During Lockdown; Biden Threatens Putin: We'll Do What We Didn't in 2014. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired December 08, 2021 - 06:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Wednesday, December 8. I'm John Berman alongside Brianna Keilar, live in Washington together this morning.

[06:00:37]

And we begin with a CNN exclusive. The January 6th House Committee casting a wide net, issuing more than 100 subpoenas for phone records, many of those targeted at former Trump officials and associates, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who just informed the committee he no longer will cooperate.

Meadows has already turned over volumes of phone and email records, the committee says, including messages that were sent and received during the Capitol riot.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Also developing this morning, the Biden administration is considering options for the possible evacuation of U.S. citizens from Ukraine if Russia does invade.

In a two-hour video call yesterday, President Biden warned Vladimir Putin that, quote, "Things we did not do in 2014 we are prepared to do now," referring to Russia's annexation of Crimea and economic measures by the U.S.

An official telling CNN that the call turned tense at times as the two leaders went back and forth over the Russian military buildup along the border with Ukraine.

BERMAN: Overnight, the House passed a new debt ceiling plan after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell cut a deal with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. The plan creates a one-time process that would allow Democrats to raise the debt ceiling with their votes alone.

KEILAR: And that pain that you've been feeling at the pump, it may be short-lived. According to government forecasts, gas prices will tumble below $3 a gallon soon. So that's good news.

BERMAN: All right. First, we're going to start with the new developments on the investigation in the January 6th insurrection. We're joined by CNN White House correspondent John Harwood and former Virginia Republican Congresswoman Barbara Comstock.

So John, on the one hand, you have the committee issuing 100 new subpoenas for phone records, saying that they've already received some information.

On the other hand, you have Mark Meadows walking away from a plan to cooperate. You have Steve Bannon, his contempt trial is not until July at this point. So I'm trying to figure out where exactly this committee is. So complete this sentence: the state of the January 6th committee is --

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Is furiously paddling against the tide, trying to amass as quickly as possible as much information as possible to illuminate the events of January 6th, realizing that the people involved at the White House, the people close to Donald Trump, are at war with this effort. They are not going to participate.

Now, Mark Meadows is a different case. He's been trying to play it cute. Wants to make money with his book. He wants to stay out of jail. So he is playing -- he has played footsie with his former colleagues in the House.

What we've seen, when push comes to shove, is he's not willing to fully cooperate. And I think that's what's going to happen with most of the people close to Trump.

Now, the question is whether or not there's enough documentary evidence that they can collect that will suffice, even if you don't get the personal cooperation. Maybe you get a little bit from Marc Short, the former chief of staff to Vice President Pence.

Meadows is living up to what Brendan Buck, a former member of the House Republican leadership, said the other day on Twitter, which is that Mark Meadows is a world-class liar, which makes him a good match for Donald Trump.

The real question, though, is how much can they get done, how fast? And it's -- it's very, very difficult to do when the -- the opposing party and the previous president simply does not want to participate in the effort to get at the truth here.

KEILAR: They're not going to get it all done, Congresswoman, obviously, right, with these tides that are against them. But are they going to get enough of a picture from the people who are cooperating and the information that they are getting, like in these subpoenas of phone records?

BARBARA COMSTOCK (R), FORMER VIRGINIA CONGRESSWOMAN: Yes, I think they are going to get a lot of information. And they already have a lot of information: 275 witnesses who are cooperating. There are people around Mark Meadows and around Donald Trump who are cooperating.

And most importantly, getting things like those phone records. Certainly, would like to see them getting text records also for people who were involved in the campaign and that rally. They should be getting bank records and see who was paying for everything. So there's a lot of ways you can get at documents that tell the story.

When I was on an investigative committee as staff, we had 125 people in our investigations during the Clinton administration who took the Fifth Amendment or fled the country. We still had a number of indictments, because we got bank records and phone records and other documentary records.

[06:05:05]

So I think people should not read too much into that. And for Bannon or Mark Meadows, as Brendan Buck said, why would you believe them anyway? I'd rather have their texts from that time.

And at the other end of that text, is another person who may be cooperating. And you even have Mark Meadows now lying, basically, it appears, about what he wrote in his book, because Donald Trump is upset with it. So he's dealing with the audience of one that he's always been worried about.

And I think the press knows from -- he was somebody who leaked a lot of information, talked to a lot of people, it is reported. And that's what Donald Trump is upset about.

But the facts are going to come out. I -- I'm fairly confident that there will be people around Mark Meadows who will tell the Mark Meadows story even if he won't.

BERMAN: You talked about indictments when you were on an investigative committee with Congress. Do you think there will be criminal referrals out of this?

COMSTOCK: Well, Bannon -- that's already going forward. You know, Republicans, you know, may think -- you know, I certainly think it's very possible Republicans take the House.

But that indictment and the trial is still going forward, and they can't stop that.

So if Mark Meadows is referred and then indicted, if Jeffrey Clark is -- and Jeffrey Clark is a lawyer and also has the issue of being disbarred. You know, the D.C. Bar may take up some of the action. Some of these other lawyers who were involved, you know, there have already been bar actions, you know, at least talked about or started.

So there's a lot of consequences here. You know, they're clearly trying to run out the clock. But the Justice Department is there for the next three years. Not just, you know, until next year.

KEILAR: Congresswoman, you mentioned that it would be great to have text records. Meaning it would be very nice to know what they were actually texting. Because let's be clear about these phone records. There's a lot of them, and they're already receiving them. But this just tells you who was talking to who, when, for how long. This doesn't tell you the contents of the phone call or the text messages.

HARWOOD: Well, that's why, as the congresswoman just said, the content of text messages is critical, because then you actually do get the meaning of the communications and the -- the outlines of the phone records give you a road map for who was talking to who.

You know, I'm struck by the optimism that she is expressing that they will be able to get what they want. You know, from my perspective, a -- let's say criminal contempt of Congress trial for Steve Bannon next year. That only gets you so far. Especially when the person --

COMSTOCK: It could get Steve Bannon in jail.

HARWOOD: Well, that -- that's true.

COMSTOCK: Probably for a year.

HARWOOD: But it also serves Steve Bannon's purpose. He wants to make this a circus to foster the larger effort that January 6th was part of, which is an offensive against American democracy.

And -- and Donald Trump is part of that. Donald Trump is encouraging that. And, you know, the question is, before the clock runs out on this Democratic Congress, if it does next year, how much can they show the American people and how much accountability can they obtain, either through the Congress itself or the Justice Department? Big question mark.

BERMAN: I will say, everyone is talking about Steve Bannon: Oh, the trial is delayed until July. But one thing a trial and a conviction doesn't do, no matter what. It doesn't force him to testify. No matter when the trial, he's not going to --

COMSTOCK: That's why getting his documents and getting the people around him is so important. There have been people around him who received his texts that day. There were phone calls reportedly, you know, going into that war room that he was in. Who --who was making those phone calls? That information can be found out.

And I think the reporting you've already had in books, in the news, is being validated every day. And when you get more of these texts and phone records, it's going to be more fully validated. And those people who maybe don't want to spend the tens and thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands that a Steve Bannon or Mark Meadows might spend, they're the ones who are going to come forward and probably have more accurate records and memories than Steve Bannon or Mark Meadows.

HARWOOD: To your point, John, if in fact, you have this trial next summer, you had the election a few months after that. Then the interest in the House of representatives and getting Steve Bannon's testimony goes to zero.

BERMAN: Right. But they're not going to get it anyway. And I will say, Congresswoman, you said something interesting in the discussion -- well, we'll move on at this point. We'll talk -- we'll about this more. I appreciate it. John Harwood, Barbara Comstock, thank you.

KEILAR: There's a new study out of South Africa indicating that this new COVID variant, Omicron, partly evades the Pfizer vaccine. But a researchers behind the study says that the findings could have been much worse.

Alex Siegel of Africa Health Research Institute telling CNN, quote, "I thought this news was very positive. I expected worse. This is not a variant that has completely escaped. It certainly escapes. It is certainly bad. But it looks to me like there are ways of dealing with it."

And joining us now is Dr. Angelique Coetzee. She is the national chair of South Africa's Medical Association. She's one of the first doctors to be treating patients who were sickened with the Omicron variant.

[06:10:01]

Doctor, thank you so much for joining us this morning, or this afternoon in your case. First, can you just give us an update on the patients that you're seeing. Are you still seeing mild symptoms, or has that advanced?

DR. ANGELIQUE COETZEE, NATIONAL CHAIR, SOUTH AFRICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION; Thank you. And good evening to you all. In South Africa, it is good afternoon. Thank you for asking. Yes. Let me give you a brief overview of the past few days of the patients that I've seen.

I have made some stats of my 40 -- 64 patients that I've seen recently. Thirty-seven, not vaccinated. Two with reinfections. And then, yes, the question that you asked of Pfizer, 19 reinfections with Pfizer.

The two reinfections that I'm talking about is patients that had COVID before, and they've got it again. So it's got nothing to do with vaccines.

And then on Johnson & Johnson, I saw seven breakthrough infections. Then interesting, I have two patients reinfected, had COVID before, then been vaccinated, fully vaccinated.

And the -- in the beginning we saw more males. But now the ratio is exactly the same: 32 males, 32 females.

So children, remember, in our country, we do not vaccinate children under the age of 12. But I have seen 11 children under the age of 13, and that is from four months old. And above 50 years, I've seen 15 patients.

So to come back to that question regarding the vaccines, yes, I think there's -- this is an escape of the vaccines regarding Omicron. But interestingly enough, it's mild disease. And that is what was also -- what has always been said. If, you know, we promote our vaccines in our country to say the vaccines are supposed to protect you against severe disease. It's supposed to protect you, at least between 94 percent and 96 percent in hospitalization.

If I look at the facts in the public sector hospital, the majority -- and I know it's 90 plus -- of people in the ICUs are unvaccinated people. Very, very few people at this stage admitted with previously being vaccinated. And also, we know that there's a high (UNINTELLIGIBLE) out there, a

turn of getting more infected at this stage, which is not really -- you know, if you look at the data, we are seeing a lot of upper respiratory infections. Or is really -- of all the infections, we didn't really saw them during our wintertime.

And that was during -- that had been admitted for that. And then, coincidentally, they would test positive for COVID. But you know, there was a huge scare out there. But if you look at the facts, it's not predominantly from COVID-19.

KEILAR: That's -- that's an important distinction. Can you tell us a little bit more about the reinfections? Because you mentioned people who have had COVID before and are unvaccinated and get reinfected. I know there aren't many that you've seen.

You also mentioned people who have had COVID, gotten vaccinated, and now I believe, this is what you're saying, still reinfected with this Omicron variant.

Can you tell us how long between infection and reinfection, and the timeline between infection, vaccination and reinfection in those cases?

COETZEE: Good question. So according to my data, the -- the average time line is last Pfizer dosage around between any time -- any time between end of July to end of August.

But I saw one patient who had been vaccinated October and got a breakthrough infection. So it -- it seems as if three months more or less after you have been vaccinated, you can be infected again. And that's more or less, look at -- you know, if you look at some of the data that the -- that Pfizer released. There is a definite decline in the protection.

But, again, I need to stress for now, it still protects against severe disease.

KEILAR: Yes.

COETZEE: As the disease patterns, what we are seeing are mild on these people that's been vaccinated.

KEILAR: It's a very good point. This is not an argument, certainly as we look at these numbers, against vaccination. This is proving why people should get vaccinated, indeed.

Doctor Coetzee, thank you for being with us.

COETZEE: Thank you so much. And please get vaccinated and get your boosters.

BERMAN: Done.

KEILAR: Oh, I am boosted. We are so boosted on this set, Doctor. Thank you so much. [06:15:00]

Relief at the pump in a major way right around the corner. What forecasters are now saying about the price of gas, which, you know, this can't come soon enough here.

And President Biden issuing a stark warning to Vladimir Putin about Russian aggression with Ukraine. Did it make a difference?

BERMAN: And breaking overnight, flames erupting in midtown Manhattan. Look at that. A Christmas tree at FOX headquarters set on fire. We have new details on the suspect.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Breaking overnight, a man arrested after a large Christmas tree outside of FOX News in midtown Manhattan was engulfed in flames. CNN's Brynn Gingras joins us live with this.

Brynn, what happened? Do they have someone in custody? What's going on here?

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they do, John.

First, though, look at the tree behind us. You can see, there's people now, actually trying to take off the ornaments of what's remaining of that tree.

But oh, my gosh. The people that came out of people taking a video of this tree engulfed in flames.

[06:20:07]

I'm told by a police source that a 49-year-old man is in custody at a nearby precinct and is talking to police but hasn't said much as to why they may have done this.

We're told this happened right after midnight. And that's actually a somewhat busy time around this area. As you know, we're just a stone's throw away from the Rockefeller Christmas tree. Luckily, there were no injuries to this.

But according to police, the man was arrested on the scene shortly after. A police source telling me that he had a lighter on him, as well. Not clear if an accelerant was used. But this certainly could have gotten out of hand pretty quickly. And the video is quite alarming, to see a Christmas tree, of course, on fire in midtown Manhattan. But again, no injuries, so that is some good news.

KEILAR: Yes.

BERMAN: That's lucky. That is good news. Lucky no one was hurt there. The video, as you say, stunning to look at.

Brynn Gingras, please keep us posted. Thank you. KEILAR: Boris Johnson is facing fierce criticism this morning. A leaked video shows senior Downing Street staff joking about a Christmas party thrown by the British prime minister during last year's Tier 3 COVID lockdown.

CNN's Salma Abdelaziz is live for us in London with the details on this. What does this reveal?

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, it's hard to overexaggerate just how big of a scandal this is in this country. Since last week, there's been reports of a Christmas party at Downing Street. But yesterday, really, the nail in the coffin. ITV, our affiliate, obtaining leaked video that appears to show senior aides laughing and joking about a Christmas party that took place during lockdown last year.

I want you to see the video that millions in this country have already watched.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ED OLDFIELD, PRIME MINISTER'S SPECIAL ADVISOR: I've just seen reports on Twitter that there was a Downing Street Christmas party on Friday night. Do you recognize those reports?

ALLEGRA STRATTON, PRIME MINISTER'S SPOKESPERSON: I went home. Hold on a moment. Err...

OLDFIELD: Would the prime minister condone having a Christmas party?

STRATTON: What's the answer?

OLDFIELD: I don't know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It wasn't a party. It was cheese and wine.

STRATTON: Is cheese and wine all right? It was a business meeting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. Joking.

STRATTON: This is recorded. This fictional party was a business meeting, and it was not socially distanced.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ABDELAZIZ: Now, the prime minister has repeatedly denied that any COVID rules were broken, that any party took place. But you can imagine in the court of public opinion, that's simply not flying.

I want to paint you a picture of what it was like at that time. There was a variant of COVID-19, the Kent variant, that was sweeping through this country. Hundreds of people were dying of COVID-19 every single day. The healthcare system was overwhelmed.

This alleged incident took place on December 18. At that time, we were under Tier 3 restrictions. Essentially, no one was allowed to mix indoors with someone that is not a part of their household.

The next day, December 19, the prime minister essentially canceled Christmas; took to the airwaves and told the public, We have to sacrifice Christmas this year if you want to see your loved ones safe and healthy next year. I'm paraphrasing. But that was essentially the message.

And a couple of days after that, the country went into full lockdown, Tier 4 restrictions as this terrible variant of COVID-19 was literally running like wildfire through this country.

So the prime minister will be facing questions on this in Parliament today. But again, already, everyone across the public accusing the government of callousness, of -- of rules applying to -- not applying to them but applying to others.

Right now on TV, if you turn it on, you're going to see families talking about where their loved ones were on that day, on December 18. Were they in hospital with COVID-19? Were they sick? Were they unable to see them?

So you can understand how this is absolutely a critical moment here for the prime minister.

KEILAR: Certainly is. Salma, thank you for that report, live for us from London.

President Biden is warning that Vladimir Putin is going to face consequences for Russia's military escalation in Ukraine. We'll have reaction to their high-stakes video call next.

BERMAN: Chilling testimony from a new accuser who says Ghislaine Maxwell told her she had a great body for Jeffrey Epstein and friends when she was just 14.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:28:34]

KEILAR: President Biden is confronting Russia's Vladimir Putin in a high-stakes video call. The president warning Putin of strong consequences, economic and otherwise, if Russia proceeds with military action in Ukraine.

CNN's Arlette Saenz is live for us at the White House with more. What was he meaning here when he issued this threat, essentially, Arlette?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, President Biden's goal in this call with Vladimir Putin was to deescalate the situation between Russia and Ukraine. But sources tell CNN the discussion between the two leaders at times turned tense.

Now, top White House officials do not believe that Putin has made that decision about whether he will invade Ukraine. But President Biden warned if he does decide to do so, there will be consequences. And the White House does not want to see a repeat of what happened in 2014. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Hello. Good to see you again.

SAENZ (voice-over): Two hours and one minute, a lengthy and critical phone call between President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. At the core of their conversation, the rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine and fears of a further invasion.

JAKE SULLIVAN, BIDEN NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: He told President Putin directly that, if Russia further invades Ukraine, the United States and our European allies would respond with strong economic measures.