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Meadows Sues Pelosi, January 6th Committee to Block Subpoenas; Obama Speaks Out Against Gerrymandering; CDC: 200 Million Americans Fully Vaccinated Against COVID; U.K. Returns to Lockdown; Secret Docs Reveal CDC's Testing Failures Early in Pandemic; SEAL Team 8 Commanding Officer Dies in Training Accident. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired December 09, 2021 - 06:00   ET

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

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. It's Thursday, December 9.

[06:01:08]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: We made it this far.

KEILAR: We have. We're so close. I'm Brianna Keilar with John Berman here. And Mark Meadows has gone from cooperating to defying to litigating, all in a matter of a few short days here.

Donald Trump's former chief of staff is now suing the January 6th Committee and also suing Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, all of this in an effort to block enforcement of a subpoena issued to him and to Verizon for his phone records.

Meadows explained his sudden reversal on FOX last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK MEADOWS, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF UNDER DONALD TRUMP: We came to the conclusion that they're still going to try to question those personal private conversations that I had with the president of the United States and other senior officials in the West Wing. And quite frankly, their scope is --

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: Well, a court is going to have to determine that.

MEADOWS: So we're going to challenge it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: The January 6th Committee is calling Meadows' lawsuit flawed. They will meet next week to take the next step, which is holding the former congressman in criminal contempt of Congress.

BERMAN: On the COVID front, two new Israeli studies published in "The New England Journal of Medicine" find Pfizer boosters reduce -- and reduce infections and deaths from COVID by 90 percent. Ninety percent. That is a stunning number. You do not see that in science, usually. New CDC data shows 200 million people are now fully vaccinated in the

United States. That's a good number, 60 percent of the eligible population.

But new polling released just moments ago shows that one-third of U.S. parents, 30 percent, say they will definitely not get their children vaccinated.

KEILAR: It's a big number.

BERMAN: Yes.

KEILAR: This morning, President Biden is hosting a virtual leaders' summit for democracy. And this features meetings with 100 governments. The goal, the White House says, is to defend against authoritarianism, to fight corruption, and to promote respect for human rights.

There are two countries, though, that are notably not even invited here, and that's China and Russia. Both are actively trying to undercut the message of the summit.

BERMAN: And moments ago, China issued something of a threat to the United States, Australia, Canada and the U.K. for all of their diplomatic boycotts of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

The Chinese officials said the countries are using the games for political manipulation and, quote, "must pay the price." I will tell you, what that tells me is that the message being sent is working.

KEILAR: That's right.

BERMAN: It's being received.

KEILAR: It's received. And maybe not well, which was the whole point.

BERMAN: Exactly.

KEILAR: So joining us now to discuss the developments on the January 6th investigation, we have CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, Elliot Williams. It says persecutor in the prompter, I have to say.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: A little of column A, a little column B.

KEILAR: I have to acknowledge that. That cracks me up.

OK. Also, former Republican presidential candidate and former Illinois congressman, Joe Walsh with us.

Thank you, guys, for being with us so bright and early here.

OK. Let's talk about Mark Meadows, because his legal argument here is quite frankly perplexing, right, Elliott? I mean, he has already turned over documents. And here he is now reversing. What is -- what is going on here with this lawsuit that he has against the committee? WILLIAMS: A couple of things. One, he's trying not to testify. I think

that's pretty clear. And slow things down.

But also, No. 2, trying to avoid getting charged with a crime. Because if they end up slapping him with contempt proceeding he can go back and say, look, I have been suing to protect my Fourth Amendment rights. I have valid privilege claims here. Your honor, this -- I can't be guilty of a crime here. I think that's part of what it is, at the risk of saying that he's being insincere.

But it makes very little sense because of the fact that, Brianna, as you said, he's turned these documents over. And so what he's taken away is his ability to provide context to the committee around those documents.

He can't say, Well, you know, there's some nuance in what those phone records say or what that email that you have seems to suggest. So it is a weird strategy.

BERMAN: Can I give an option No. 3 here, Joe. Which is that Mark Meadows provided all this stuff already. Jamie Gangel's going to come on in a little bit and tell us that it turns out some of the stuff is very interesting.

[06:05:07]

KEILAR: Yes.

BERMAN: And the committee is really digging into this.

So Joe, what he's trying to do now is trying to send a message to Daddy.

JOE WALSH, FORMER REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Trump.

BERMAN: Exactly. And say, look, I'm fighting this. I didn't really just give them a whole bunch of stuff that might be a little bit hairy.

WALSH: Meadows got way over his skis. I think Elliott is right on the legal aspect of this. Politically, he's trying to get back in good graces with Trump.

I mean, he wrote a book that I thought he thought would be -- would make him look good in front of Donald Trump. But clearly, Trump was upset with that. There are people on the inner circle who believe Trump is really upset with Meadows. So he's trying to appease Trump again.

KEILAR: Let's talk about something we just heard the former President Obama discuss, which is gerrymandering. Obviously, in light of the fact that, you know, it's possible Republicans take over the House without even, you know, necessarily winning a seat, just because of the way these districts have been reapportioned.

Here's what the former president said. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Their plan is to control state legislatures and congressional delegations before a single vote is cast. That's not how democracy is supposed to work. And our democracy is essential to who we are. It is what makes America exceptional, and it shouldn't be a partisan issue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: What do you think about his comments?

WALSH: I get it. And I appreciate what he's saying. But if I'm a Democrat, look, this is a tool that both parties use. Both parties kind of need to use this tool, unless both parties agree they're not going to use it. I don't see how one party can stand down and say I'm not going to gerrymander. The whole thing needs to reform, but certainly not what the Republicans will do.

BERMAN: Yes, I mean, I think coming out against gerrymandering is like saying water is wet. I mean, it sort of is obvious.

But Elliot, what's going on, California, which has this nonpartisan redistricting thing, if Democrats wanted to fight fire with fire, they'd gerrymander erred the heck out of California. They'd gerrymander the heck out of New York, which are their two biggest weapons, which they -- they haven't gone all in.

WILLIAMS: Right. Republicans have just been more successful about this. And so I'll push back on Joe a little bit. They've just done it better for a very long time. And just look in real terms.

Now, look, the Supreme Court in 2013 and 2019 made this a lot easier. One, by gutting a portion of the Voting Rights Act that would have governed how states change their laws.

And two by saying that partisan gerrymandering -- this was in 2019 -- partisan gerrymandering is something you can get away with.

Let's look at North Carolina, which is a state -- California is just theoretical. This happened in North Carolina. They voted for Joe Biden. I think it was 48.7 percent voted for a Democratic governor.

But now the map of congressional districts is 10 Republicans to 4 Democrats. You look at that map, and it defies mathematics or logic. But somehow, 70 or 75 percent of the seats go to Republicans. And President Obama is right, that is not the way democracy is supposed to work. The will of the people of North Carolina just aren't represented in that breakdown of congressional districts.

BERMAN: Can I just say -- I don't want to give people the impression that I support gerrymandering. Obviously, I don't. I'm just -- I just want people to know it exists. And the Democrats have weapons that they can use if they want to.

And in terms of North Carolina being unfair, obviously. But people also need to understand that this isn't going to change. The courts aren't going to radically -- it's not going to become a 7-7 state.

WILLIAMS: No, it's not going to change. Getting back to this 2013 Supreme Court decision. It's the law that you can get away with political, partisan gerrymandering.

And so what Republicans are doing, quite successfully, Democrats can, too. But they just haven't done the same. And they should.

WALSH: Right. They should.

WILLIAMS: But you can. And North Carolina is probably the clearest example -- there might even be a better one -- of simply carving up the state in a way that just doesn't reflect the percentage of voters.

WALSH: Elliot's right, but it goes to this point. My former political party has declared war on democracy. And they're using this gerrymandering tool. That's just one tool.

I just -- Again, I think the Democrats need to step up and recognize this unique dangerous moment we're in.

KEILAR Speaking of your former party, you have senator -- former senator David Perdue in Georgia, who is trying to unseat Governor Brian Kemp as governor.

WALSH: Yes.

KEILAR: And he has now bought into the big lie publicly. He has said that he would have not certified the votes in Georgia that obviously gave Georgia to Joe Biden. I wonder -- he's had time, Joe, to think about this. And this is where he's come down.

WALSH: He wants to win. He wants to win. And it's about Daddy. It's about Trump. But guys, it's about the base.

The base of the Republican Party has embraced this big lie. Perdue knows if he's going to win in Georgia, he's got to wrap his arms around it every single day. It's sad; it's pathetic; it's wrong. But that's where Republican Party voters are.

[06:19:09]

KEILAR: And it's Kemp's vulnerability.

WALSH: Totally.

KEILAR: As far as base voters are concerned.

WALSH: Yes.

BERMAN: And what do Democrats do about this, Elliot? Harry Enten has some polling which shows that the big lie may have depressed the vote in 2020, but actually, it doesn't look like it's doing that this time, particularly among Republicans.

WILLIAMS: What do they do? It's make the case to the American people that -- that there is a toxin taking hold in American politics that, actually, not just is destroying the system but is seeming to win. And it has become an increasing litmus test for a party to enter the post- truth world.

That's not a great solution, which is that be honest with the American people and tell them that the other side is lying, and demagoguing an issue. But it -- we're past reality here, and this is quite dangerous to our -- the fabric of our system.

WALSH: Democrats have to outvote them. Just plain and simple, outvote them.

WILLIAMS: But they can't if they get gerrymandered out. So it's a big problematic circle, which is that, yes, I mean, Democrats ought to flex more political muscle. But they can't, at least with respect to Congress, if they're losing their seats at a greater rate than Republicans are.

KEILAR: A vote in the Senate last night that we saw against the policy of the Biden administration, which is that employers have to -- their employees have to be vaccinated or have weekly testing. This is for employees who have more than 100 -- employers, pardon me, who have more than 100 employees.

Two Democrats joined Republicans here. What do you make of this?

WALSH: I think it's indicative of the fact that the country is moving ahead of where the Biden administration is. If this government mandate was such a big deal, then it should have been -- it never seemed like an emergency. And now here we are, a few months beyond it.

I think the American people have moved beyond the motion of mandates. Vaccines are a very separate animal. But Tester and Manchin reflecting a big part of the Democratic Party, Democratic voters, as well, against mandates.

BERMAN: Elliott, Joe, it was great to see you.

WALSH: Great to see you, too.

BERMAN: We were -- we were in the greenroom. And I'm a little bit of a mess this morning. And they were nice enough not to judge me that I had four bags laid out everywhere and couldn't find my makeup kit.

WALSH: And it wasn't a little bit.

WILLIAMS: It was a lot of bags. There were a lot of bags.

KEILAR: It's weird. I take pleasure -- I'm normally the more discombobulated one.

BERMAN: Not today.

KEILAR: So today, here I am, showing up. All right, guys, thank you so much.

The U.K. is essentially going back into lockdown. This is in response to the Omicron variant, but is this the right move?

And newly-uncovered documents revealing how the CDC's first COVID test failed in the early days of the pandemic.

BERMAN: We are on verdict watch in the case of former "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett. He's accused of staging his own hate crime attract -- attack. When will the jury come back?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:17:09]

BERMAN: As of this morning, some 200 million people in the United States are fully vaccinated against coronavirus. That's a big number.

According to the CDC, nearly 2 million doses a day are now being administered.

But 24 percent of the eligible population has still not received a single shot.

Two separate new Israeli studies really show the efficacy of booster shots. Booster shots reduce infections and deaths from COVID by 90 percent or more. Ninety percent reduction. That's just a huge number in any kind of scientific study. Deaths and severer cases are low among people who received two doses already, but the booster shots lower them even more dramatically.

KEILAR: The rapid spread of the Omicron variant in the U.K. leading Boris Johnson to impose some new lockdown restrictions. They include ordering people to work from home and to mask up in public places in an effort to contain the spread.

CNN's Elizabeth Cohen joining us with more on this.

Elizabeth, lots of, you know, precautions being taken here. Something that the U.K. is certainly familiar with, even as people are highly vaccinated.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. So but they're going back to sort of a different version of what they did months ago in trying to make things stricter, trying to put more restrictions on.

And let's talk about why. The British -- the Brits, they have a really great genomic sequencing surveillance system. Sequencing and surveillance system. And what they've noticed is the rates of Omicron going up. They say doubling every two to three days.

Now, there's lots of talk about is Omicron so bad, et cetera. But still, you hate to see this, any variant getting that kind of spread.

And so here's what the U.K. is doing to try to get things under control. They're advising people to work from home if possible. Not a requirement. But if possible. Also requiring face coverings in most public indoor settings and requiring proof of vaccination in large venues with hundreds or thousands of people.

Now, when you hear this, as someone in the U.S., you think, wow, should we be doing the same thing? To some extent, some locations in the U.S. are. You do see mask requirements in some parts of the United States.

You also do see vaccine requirements, vaccine passport requirements in some places. For example, in New York City and Los Angeles County. And in New Orleans you see requirements that you have to have a vaccine to get into restaurants or other kind of similar venues.

So it's interesting that the U.K. has sort of taken this big step. We'll see if any locations in the U.S. follow suit -- Brianna, John.

KEILAR: Yes. Hard to imagine a broad approach this way, though. Elizabeth, thank you.

BERMAN: So secret federal documents uncovered by Buzzfeed News reveal crucial information about why the CDC's first COVID test failed in the early days of the pandemic and what that meant for the deadly spread of the virus in the United States.

[06:20:06]

Joining me now is science reporter for Buzzfeed News, Dan Vergano. He's the investigative reporter who broke this story. It's a heck of a story, Dan. Thank you so much for joining us.

Just in summation, it was a mess. I mean, it was a mess. And you had one lab and other labs that were just overburdened by the scope of the coronavirus challenge.

DAN VERGANO, SCIENCE REPORTER, BUZZFEED NEWS: That's right. What we got with these documents, which we were quite surprised the government gave to us, unredacted and complete, was a peer into the workings of these very overburdened labs that suddenly had the whole weight of the world on them.

BERMAN: And specifically, Dan, you found that there was a lot of blame to go around. It wasn't just this one smaller lab, which had a lot of fingers pointed at it for a long time that really, you know, wasn't set up to handle it and also whose -- whose standards weren't as strict as they should have been.

VERGANO: Right. So there was government dysfunction there. These labs have been neglected for decades. And so they were sort of set up to fail.

There was misaimed blame, as you say, where the -- the lab was given the, you know, shaft here. It was sort of you did the wrong thing. And it looks like a bunch of other labs were making mistakes.

But the thing was this calamity of this test not working out was magnified by the fact we didn't have a testing strategy at all in this country. So if one test went bad, we were, like, out of luck. Where are all the tests? Well, we were counting on this one. Why wasn't, you know, there more thinking about where else are you supposed to get a test?

BERMAN: And then another interesting part of what you found is, look, it's not like there weren't tests that were working in other places in the world.

VERGANO: Right.

BERMAN: So why didn't the U.S. just say, Hey, look at this. It's working.

VERGANO: That's a great question. There was just a lot of overconfidence there. They were, oh, yes, we had tests before. This one's going to work.

And, you know, why didn't the leadership at CDC and HHS, and the Trump administration say, you know, maybe we should look at these other tests and have them in our back pocket in case this one doesn't work out. That's a question that hasn't really been answered.

BERMAN: So Dan, what's interesting, people should know, is you FOIA'd this. You did this, some great investigative reporting. And then once you got the documents, HHS tried to claw them back. And like any good reporter, you're like, Oh, that must mean we really do have something good here. But my question to you is, why should we care now? Why does this matter for us now and going forward?

VERGANO: Because we're still living with the mistakes that were made then. We still are arguing about tests even today. And these questions have never been examined. And we're not going to do what to do in the next pandemic, which is going to happen unless we have some sort of look-back at what went wrong here at this particular moment, this canary in the coal mine moment, where we realize, Oh, my God, our government isn't going to handle this very well. And, you know, have something like a COVID-19 Commission or something to try and make sure it doesn't happen again.

BERMAN: Dan Vergano, again, congratulations on your reporting. Thanks so much for coming in this morning. Appreciate it.

VERGANO: You bet.

BERMAN: So a Navy SEAL Team commander dies after a training accident. What went wrong here? We're live at the Pentagon. next.

KEILAR: Plus, how one nation is planning to outlaw smoking for the next generation. And why the pope is defending an archbishop who allegedly engaged in an affair.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:27:41] KEILAR: A Navy SEAL has died following a tragic training accident. We have now learned that it is the commander of SEAL Team 8, Brian Bourgeois, who died from injuries sustained during a fast-rope training exercise in Virginia.

CNN's Oren Liebermann is joining us live from the Pentagon.

Oren, this is so sad for this community and for the U.S. military. This is one of the top leaders among the SEALs.

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. Commander Brian Bourgeois, 43 years old, was a 20-year veteran of the Navy and Navy Special Warfare Command, meaning he basically spent his entire adult life, ever since graduating from the Naval Academy, in this community. As you point out, he was the commander of the Navy's elite SEAL Team 8.

Over this past weekend, he was taking part in what's called fast rope training. That's when SEALs descend from a helicopter to the ground as quickly as possible. It's meant to get SEALs onto the battlefield in as great numbers as possible as soon as possible.

It's unclear exactly what went wrong here. But the Navy says there is an investigation. Initial indications say that during this training, there was some kind of accident or incident, and he sustained injuries.

He was rushed to the hospital over the weekend, where he died yesterday.

In a statement, his commander, Captain Donald G. Wetherbee, the commodore of Naval Special Warfare Group 2, said, "Brian was as tough as they come, an outstanding leader and a committed father, husband, and friend. This is a great loss to everyone who knew him. He will be greatly missed."

Over his career in the military, he'd been awarded the Bronze Star and a number of other awards and commendations and medals. He's survived by a wife and five children. May his memory be a blessing -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes. And we will keep his family and the entire SEAL community in our thoughts. Thank you, Oren.

BERMAN: So New Zealand is putting cigarettes on the endangered list. The government there plans to outlaw smoking for the next generation, so those 14 and under will never be able to buy cigarettes legally in the country.

Proposed new legislation calls for the legal smoking age of 18 to increase every year, thereby creating a generation of smoke-free New Zealanders.

CNN covering this and other developments all around the world.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Scott McLean, outside British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's residence in London and site of an alleged staff Christmas party last year, at a time when social gatherings indoors were banned in London.

Boris Johnson's then-press secretary resigned yesterday after a video showing her joking about the alleged party was leaked to the press. Johnson says --