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U.S. Identifies Russian Elites Who May Face Sanctions if there is an Invasion; U.K.'s Boris Johnson to Speak after Partygate Report Update. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired January 31, 2022 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: CNN had reported previously that Harris was evacuated minutes after the pipe bomb was discovered, but multiple sources now reveal that she was inside the DNC for nearly two hours before it was found.

Joining us now, CNN law enforcement correspondent Whitney Wild and CNN security correspondent Josh Campbell. Whitney, why don't you give us the reporting on this.

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: John and Brianna, let me take you back to January 5th, 2021, the night before the riot. The FBI says that the suspect, who is still outstanding, planted a pipe bomb just about right here outside the DNC. Fast forward to 11:30 a.m. January 6th when Kamala Harris came into the DNC with her motorcade through this garage entrance. Look how close that is. She was within yards of this pipe bomb.

Further, a law enforcement source tells CNN that Harris' detail swept prior to the arrival, they swept the entrances and exits, they swept the driveway, they swept the parking garage, as well as areas of the building inside where she would be. However, clearly something was missed.

And then further, when you look at the timeline here, she arrived around 11:25 a.m. that day. The pipe bomb was not discovered until 1:06. She was evacuated at 1:14 through an alternate route far away from this pipe bomb. But still, she was inside the DNC for nearly two hours before she was evacuated, more than 90 minutes before the pipe bomb was even found. So clearly several questions about how this happened.

However, it exposes not only a security gap here, but more broadly, when you think about the challenge for law enforcement on January 6th, there were security gaps clear throughout the city because the day was just so chaotic. Law enforcement dealing with crises throughout the city that seemed to unfold minute by minute. Bad actors had the opportunity to exploit those security gaps in some places. Fortunately, nothing harmful happened here. But it is another example of just how much worse that day could have been John and Brianna. KEILAR: Yes, certainly. Josh, this is how much worse it could have been. We're learning how much more risk there was than we knew before. What questions does that raise for you?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Serious questions raised by Whitney's great new reporting. Two parts that I look at here. The first are the security protocols that were in place, but also the flow of information, why it's taken so long to hear from folks in government actually talking about what happened.

The way it works on the security side is any time you have a scheduled movement by a protectee of the U.S. Secret Service, they will send what's called an advanced team. Their job is to sweep a particular building, to make contact with the head security official of that venue, and to prepare for every eventuality.

For example, if there's a threat inside the building, how do we get this person out, what routes of escape are there. If there's a threat outside, maybe we're going to hunker down inside and wait for the cavalry. Where will we go?

So again, the big question here is something like a pipe bomb sitting outside that building, how was that missed by this advanced team that was responsible for sweeping that location.

To be sure, with the construction of this particular device, the odds of that going off at the exact moment that Harris was driving by in one of these secure battle wagons, the threat to her wasn't as high as it could have been had she been walking around, for example. But the risk is certainly there.

The second part, on the flow of information. The Secret Service has a no-fail mission. These are highly trained professionals with one of the most critical jobs in government. But for those of us that cover the agency, we know that oftentimes in response to our questions, they rely on one standard response, and that is we don't talk about protective operations. That's fine in some circumstances. But here, the reason can't be embarrassment. You can't fail to respond to something because the answer to your question might be embarrassing for the agency. So a lot of questions there for the Secret Service.

Finally, questions for Harris as well. Was she told by the Secret Service, hey, let's not talk about this, this is under investigation. You can understand in the immediate aftermath of the incident, that being something they want to do to try to figure out what they're dealing with. But the longer this goes, the reason can't be this is embarrassing, this will give the agency a black eye. That's not going to fly with lawmakers, certainly not the public.

BERMAN: To that point, Josh, this isn't just a miss. It's a big miss. And this just isn't a gap in informing the public what happened here. This is a big gap. More than a year. What other possible reason could there be other than the fact they're just embarrassed?

CAMPBELL: Is that for me or Whitney? I'm sorry.

BERMAN: You, Josh. Go ahead.

CAMPBELL: Yes. Well, again, we still don't know who this person is. They haven't been identified, and so there is that investigative piece. That often will shroud the flow of information if there's some lead that they're still trying to work on. But, again, we're over a year out from that. And the fact that this was not only a bomb at the DNC, there was also a bomb found over at the Republican National Committee. The idea that she was being specifically started, not likely.

So again, I go back to what I was saying about embarrassment. If that is the reason, that this would have been embarrassing, then have to speak up and they have to explain what actually happened.

[08:05:05]

By the way, it's reporting like Whitney's and what this network does all the time that makes these law enforcement agencies better and more effective, because you can bet that every advance team around the country with the Secret Service, they're getting that talk, that look. This is your job. This cannot happen again.

BERMAN: Great work, Whitney Wild. Thank you so much for your reporting. And Josh, thank you for being with us this morning.

So dangerous, dangerous words from Donald Trump over the weekend, and perhaps a sign of what's to come if and when he runs for office. The former defeated president speaking to supporters in Texas, essentially calling for people to take to the streets if he ever faces charges in the multiple investigations into him or his businesses. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta, and elsewhere, because our country and our elections are corrupt. They're corrupt.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: That is dangerous, and that is a lie. And to boot there, he also brought race into this imaginary slate.

BERMAN: So as a result of that statement overnight, the Fulton County district attorney, one of the prosecutors referred to by Trump who is investigating his efforts to overturn the election results in Georgia, she asked the FBI to provide security for buildings and staff there. We should also note that Trump put out a statement overnight that more or less admitted that he did not want Pence -- that he did, admitting that he did want Pence to just overturn the election.

Joining us now, attorney and "Washington Post" contributing columnist George Conway. George, thanks so much for being with us this morning.

GEORGE CONWAY, ATTORNEY: Thanks for having me. BERMAN: I want to start with this pardon dangle. The former president

didn't just call for people to take to the streets if these court cases go against him, but he also seemed to suggest that he would, if elected, pardon the people behind the insurrection. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6th fairly. We will treat them fairly.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: The legal implications of that, George.

CONWAY: If it were possible for someone to have violated their oath of office before even taking it, he just did that right there. As far as the practical, legal implications of it are concerned, it actually goes to his intent for the second time he was impeached, his intent to obstruct -- to cause an insurrection on Capitol Hill. He actually wanted them to do this. And the fact that he is now praising them for having done this shows that his intent was pretty much -- his state of mind was pretty much as Stephanie Grisham has described it. He was glad they did it.

And that, in turn, goes to the potential criminal investigation that he was -- he's been apparently very much afraid of, given the speech he just gave. This goes to, again, his intent to obstruct, and I'm using words in Title 18, Section 1512C of the U.S. code, to obstruct or otherwise impede the proceedings, the official proceedings before Congress to count the electoral votes.

He wanted that stopped, and he did that in a bunch of different ways. One was inciting violence, which he now proposes to reward people with pardons. He did that through strongarming his vice president to overturn the election, as his statement last night said. And he did that also by having his campaign -- I assume he had some involvement in it -- prepare these false or fake electoral certificates.

And so all of these things really -- it's all starting to gel, the public information. And the real question is -- obviously the January 6th committee is on top of it and has been collecting evidence. The question is whether any of this evidence will be presented to a grand jury. And given the facts at least on the surface that we see publicly fit the elements of the offense, there's no reason why a grand jury shouldn't be empaneled to start looking into this for real. Whether or not he's charged or whether or not the case ultimately will get tried before a jury in the District of Columbia will depend on prosecutor's assessments of how it can be presented and the specific evidence they uncover. But it's just something that just has to be looked at, and it has to be looked at very, very closely.

[08:10:09]

KEILAR: And will Merrick Garland look at it, right? Will the DOJ look at this? Will they probe Trump? Should they, George?

CONWAY: Yes, they should. And that's exactly my point. The U.S. attorney's office in the District of Columbia is responsible to Attorney General Garland, and they're the ones who would present evidence to a grand jury in D.C. And if Attorney General Garland, as his speech indicated two or three weeks ago, really means that they're going to look at everything and everybody, including people who are much more important to what happened on January 6th than some of the foot soldiers, he has to do it.

BERMAN: George, so Trump put out this statement overnight. What he's doing is he's criticizing the idea of reform of the 1887 Electoral College Act. But the last line of this statement about Mike Pence is, he says, he could have overturned the election, which is sort of like the end of "A Few Good Men." It's sort of like Jack Nicholson saying, did you order the code red? You're dam right I did. I want to overturn the election.

CONWAY: Somebody really should read him his Miranda rights. He has the right to remain silent. He just is incriminating himself with all of these statements. The statements when he praises the insurrectionists. But this is just absurd. He's just smart. He's not a very smart man. He's a very arrogant man. And sometimes, every so often, when it comes to his bad intent, he tells the truth. And that's what he's saying here. He wanted this election to be overturned against the results, against the will of the people. He wanted to end constitutional democracy in the United States. And he's just out and out admitting it now.

KEILAR: Like you said, he's out and out admitting it. It speaks to intent here, George, which is so important when it comes to the president's actions. If he were trying to say I had no idea that people would respond to what I said when they were violent. Now he knows and he's still saying this. It speaks to intent.

CONWAY: Yes, it speaks to intent that he is praising these people, he's saying he might pardon them. And the people who would be in jail in 2024 still would be the most violent of the seditionists, the people who were charged with sedition who may be convicted of it. So he really is just going full force into praising the violence that occurred on January 6th.

BERMAN: And perhaps calling for more, right? Because one of the things he said, he said if --

CONWAY: Yes, the threats to prosecutors, yes. He's essentially threatening prosecutors in New York, the District of Columbia, and in Atlanta for basically doing their jobs, to investigate things that he did. And he is basically -- he's someone who essentially -- he doesn't care about the country. He doesn't care about morality. He doesn't care about right and wrong. He doesn't care about democracy. He doesn't care about the people he sends up to Capitol Hill who might get hurt. He doesn't care about the police officers who get hurt. He only cares about one thing, and that's himself.

And it's just a complete disgrace. He's beneath contempt, and the notion he could possibly run for president again and be elected is, frankly, a stain on the United States Senate, which could have prevented that, and an embarrassment to the country.

KEILAR: Look, most people look at this stuff, if they're not pro Trump, they look at this stuff, and it's exhausting, this chaos. It seems instead to --

CONWAY: It absolutely is.

KEILAR: It is, but it seems to energize Trump.

CONWAY: It absolutely energizes Trump because it's all about him. He wants to make everything all about him. He wants to make the 2024 campaign about him and his grievances and the wrongs he felt were done to him.

And mainstream Republicans, or at least the Republican leadership, want him to talk about things like inflation and the coronavirus and things that are normal political issues, even though they sometimes go too far on some of this stuff. And there's a tension there. And we're starting to see some cracks there a little bit. You did see some Republicans yesterday on the Sunday shows putting some distance between themselves and the statements Trump made about pardoning people. You're starting to see polls where people are -- where more Republicans are saying maybe Trump shouldn't run, and more polls saying that people consider themselves more members of the Republican party than they are supporters of Donald Trump. We're seeing a little of that. But this should have happened a year ago, two years ago, it should have happened a long time ago. And whether it happens enough to make a difference to make this country a better place and a safer place, I just don't know.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. We'll see. Although it is clear, I think that a number of Republicans are uncomfortable with what happened this weekend and it does put a number of them in a bind. So we'll have to see how they respond going forward.

George Conway, thanks so much for being with us this morning.

CONWAY: Thanks for having me.

BERMAN: So new this morning, who does the Biden administration plan to sanction if Russia invades Ukraine? We have new details.

And breaking this morning, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson will speak just a short time from now. He got an update on the Partygate report into him and his administration, but the thing is, he kind of controls how the announcements are made about this now.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: And Elon Musk trying to use his wallet to bribe a 19-year-old to delete a Twitter account that tracks the billionaire's private jet. How much money did the teenager turn down?

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BERMAN: New this morning, a senior White House official tells CNN that plans are underway to sanction several high level Russian officials they say are complicit in the Kremlin's destabilizing behavior, and these sanctions would happen if Russia invades Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council meets in just a few hours to discuss the tensions on the border there. Joining me now CNN anchor and chief national security correspondent, Jim Sciutto and CNN reporter, Natasha Bertrand.

Natasha, let's start with this reporting on the Russian officials who will be sanctioned. What have you learned here?

[08:20:05]

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, John, so a White House official is telling CNN that as part of the measures that the U.S. is developing to deter a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, they have developed these sanctions packages against elite Russian officials and business leaders that would be imposed if Russia did, in fact move to attack Ukraine yet again.

And what we're learning is that these officials are in and around the Kremlin's inner circle. They won't tell us who exactly is being eyed for these sanctions because they worry about flight risks. They don't want these people to have a prior warning, so that they don't move their assets, for example, and try to get ahead of the sanctions.

But this would be a significant move for the U.S. to target kind of people close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who are instrumental in that Kremlin decision making, because those are the people that can potentially convince Putin not to take certain actions.

And so what the U.S. and its allies are hoping is that by kind of targeting these oligarchs, by threatening to freeze their assets, by threatening to target their families even, they can, you know, hopefully pull some strings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and try to get him to pull back from the border.

Now, of course, there is a range of other sanctions options that the U.S. is looking at, not just sanctioning this kind of inner circle of the Kremlin to include sanctions on Russia's major banks, and, of course, tight export controls against Russia.

But this is something that experts had been calling for because it is one of the things that they think could really move the needle.

KEILAR: And those export controls. I mean, the idea here is you have people trying to use stuff, their phones, and they may be harder to come by, Jim and then you have the oligarchs being targeted. Are these things together enough of a deterrent?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR AND NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: We don't know. Right? I mean, the criticism remains that you have some who say you've got to impose the sanctions now, not if and when Russia were to invade to make it clear that this is different. Right?

Now, what is clear is that the Biden administration, European allies are considering a range of sanctions that they have not done in the past, right, to back up this point that these are qualitatively different. We're going to make it hurt for the Russian economy and for individuals close to the Russian President in a way the West has not done before, and which, by the way, has proved insufficient, right, because you've had a whole host of sanctions in place since 2014 that have not moved Russia.

They still occupy Ukraine and large parts of Eastern Ukraine, still occupy Crimea, I should say, and large parts of eastern Ukraine. Those didn't work. Will these work? But there still remains the criticism that just kind of hanging these out there as a menu of things that might happen is not the same as imposing them today.

BERMAN: So, Jim, big week, right? Today, you have the Security Council of the United Nations meeting. There could be a real faceoff between the United Nations and Russia there. We know of a phone call set up between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Sergey Lavrov, what are you looking for in the next couple of days?

SCIUTTO: I'd pay far less attention to what you hear coming out of the mouths of Russian officials and watch more for activity on the ground, right? And that is what -- that's the dissonance that has been in place for the last couple of weeks, because even as you've had these talks between the U.S. and Russia, Western allies and Russia, more, not fewer Russian troops have ended up on that border there.

And as you see, you know, what's key, as you look at those red dots around the Eastern and Northern border of Ukraine, is that Russia doesn't have the country surrounded, but it does have the ability to carry out a pincer movement in effect.

And by the way, what's significant about those forces in Belarus is that that's very close. There's Kyiv on the map there. It's very close to the Ukrainian capital. So, it's a different number of forces than we've seen in the past. It's a different quality of forces in terms of all the capabilities they have there.

But it is also a different geographical array of them. They are coming from more than just the East now, potentially. So, I would watch that border and military movements more than what is something of diplomatic theater from what you might hear from the floor of the U.N. Security Council today.

BERMAN: Jim Sciutto, we'll see you in just a few minutes at the top of the hour. Natasha, thank you so much for your new reporting on sanctions.

KEILAR: We do have some breaking news this morning. The senior civil servant investigating Boris Johnson and his alleged partying during the U.K.'s COVID lockdown has provided an update on its report to the Prime Minister's Office. CNN's Salma Abdelaziz is joining us from London.

What's going to happen here? Because now, this thing that everyone wants to know about is pretty much in his hands?

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN REPORTER: Absolutely, Brianna. Right behind me here, Downing Street officials are parsing through that Sue Gray report because here is the thing to remember. Yes, this is supposed to be an independent inquiry, but Gray's boss is Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

So right now, it is him and his staff that get the first look at that report and what they're going to do is they're going to take it to Parliament. In just a couple of hours' time, the Prime Minister will be there to provide his statement, his view of the report and yes, again, this is the report we've been waiting for, for weeks because it is Gray who has been investigating these multiple allegations of partying, partying during lockdown, partying when the country was under strict COVID rules, partying under the Prime Minister's own roof by his own senior staff that may have potentially committed criminal offenses.

[08:25:22]

ABDELAZIZ: And that's the catch here, Brianna, because there is a second investigation, this one led by the police that is still ongoing. So the police have asked Gray to have minimal references to the most flagrant violations that may have occurred behind me here.

But what that Gray report is going to do is it's going to give you a flavor of what this civil servant thinks about the drinking and partying culture that occurred behind me at 10 Downing Street, and it could be yet another blow for a Prime Minister who is just trying to hang on to his seat -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes, I just come back to, was it worth it for what -- some wine and cake? I mean, what he did here. Salma, thank you for the very latest from London.

A Republican senator is blasting President Biden's promise to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court is filling in affirmative action quota. We're going to speak to one of his Democratic colleagues, next.

BERMAN: Joe Rogan responding to critics over the growing Spotify controversy. His defense and sort of apology, ahead.

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