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Feds Raid Home Of Jeffrey Clark, Ex-DOJ Official At Center Of Coup Plot; Senate Passes Gun Safety Bill As Justices Ease Access To Firearms; FDA Orders Juul To Remove Vaping Products From U.S. Market. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired June 24, 2022 - 07:30   ET

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

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[07:31:15]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD DONOGHUE, FORMER ACTING DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: The president yelled out to the secretary "Get Ken Cuccinelli on the phone," and she did in very short order. Mr. Cuccinelli was on the phone. He was the number two at DHS at the time.

I was on the speakerphone. And the president essentially said "Ken, I'm sitting here with the acting attorney general. He just told me it's your job to seize machines and you're not doing your job," and Mr. Cuccinelli responded.

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): Mr. Rosen, did you ever tell the president that the Department of Homeland Security could seize voting machines?

JEFFREY ROSEN, FORMER DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: No, certainly not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So, testimony during the hearing which showed that Donald Trump was saying things that were not true. That he was asking senior Justice Department officials to say things that were not true -- that they told him were not true. And that he called them almost every day to try to get them to do things that they told him repeatedly they had no power to do.

Just a day earlier -- just a day before this dramatic testimony, federal investigators raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former DOJ official who pushed Trump's false election fraud claims. The former president sought to install Clark as attorney general in the days before the January 6 insurrection, something the other justice officials took issue with.

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RICHARD DONOGHUE, FORMER ACTING DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: I made the point that Jeff Clark is not competent to serve as the attorney general. He's never been a criminal attorney. He's never conducted a criminal investigation in his life. He's never been in front of a grand jury much less a trial jury.

And he kind of retorted by saying, "Well, I've done a lot of very complicated appeals, and civil litigation, environmental litigation, and things like that." And I said, "That's right, you're an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office and we'll call you when there's an oil spill."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: With us now is Donald Ayer. He was the deputy attorney general under President George H.W. Bush, and principal deputy solicitor general under President Reagan. Also with us, former FBI agent Peter Strzok.

Donald, I want to start with you here. Again, the testimony from Jeffrey Rosen, who was the acting A.G., saying that Donald Trump called him or saw him almost every day for weeks pushing him to say things that he repeatedly told Trump were not true, and Trump pushing him to do things that he repeatedly told Donald Trump he could not do.

My friend Jon Karl at ABC calls this the greatest abuse of power -- even greater than Watergate.

Put this in -- put this in the big picture. What do you see as what went on here?

DONALD AYER, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL UNDER PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY SOLICITOR GENERAL UNDER PRESIDENT REAGAN, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY, EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA: Well, I think -- I think what we're seeing is an echo, but a more dramatic one of what we've already seen in the other hearings. And that is, in about the worst way imaginable, Donald Trump is personally engaged in active efforts here every day to convince people to do things that would dramatically advance his goal of stealing the election over the objections of his own appointees.

And so, Jeffrey Rosen being called every day and all of these things that you've reported on, and the statement about just say it's corrupt and let us take care of it, and the effort to seize voting machines, and the effort to try to get a lawsuit -- an idiotic lawsuit brought in the Supreme Court, et cetera, et cetera -- the Italian conspiracy, but Trump personally involved in all of that.

And it's an extraordinary indication of his personal culpability, which we saw again in the other hearings.

[07:35:05]

He's the one who drove the effort to get Mike Pence to do the wrong thing. He's the one who called Jeffery Rosen -- I'm sorry, Brad Raffensperger in Georgia to get him to do it, and called his assistant Watson, and made all of these different calls that are designed to corrupt the election. It might have been the case that others did a lot of this stuff but

what we're learning is no, it was Donald Trump personally and it was Donald Trump over the objections of his own people. That's the dramatic revelation here I think.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Donald, what is the likelihood that Trump will face consequences for this? Has that increased?

AYER: I think it's increased a lot and I think ultimately, we all have to realize that the ultimate call here is the call of the Department of Justice. And I think our job as citizens is to watch and wait and see how they call it.

But as far as the considerations that drive that decision -- you know, you're dealing -- according to DOJ guidelines, you're dealing with the seriousness of the offense as a major consideration. Well, that I think addresses itself when you think about what was this about. It was about destroying our democratic system.

And a second major consideration is the importance of deterrence. Well, we've got active efforts to steal the 2024 election going on right now. Deterrence is absolutely critical.

And the third major leading consideration is the culpability of the person that you're looking at. And here we're getting the evidence of extraordinary personal culpability by Donald Trump.

So I think -- I think the considerations that weigh in favor of prosecution are being ratcheted up in an extraordinarily dramatic way.

BERMAN: It seems some of the actions that Justice is taking ratcheting up in a significant way, Peter, because we learned while this was all happening -- just a day before this dramatic hearing -- federal investigators raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, who is this Justice Department official -- former -- at the center of this all.

What does that action tell you?

PETER STRZOK, FORMER FBI DEPUTY ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Well, it tells me that one, there is an investigation going on that likely is targeting Mr. Clark. That, again, it's important to understand just how high he was in the Department of Justice and he was the intended acting attorney general by former President Trump.

So to go in with a search warrant signed by a federal judge based on a representation that the judge found that there was evidence of a crime currently there. This is not something that well, he had in his possession back in January of 2021. There -- a judge found that there again was evidence in that house at the day of the search, which is Wednesday.

So, these are the sorts of things that you would expect to see as an outside observer. DOJ did not make any announcement about this. This came out through Mr. Clark's employer. Later, Mr. Clark went on television and talked about it. So, DOJ, as you would expect and as I would expect, is not talking

about what they're doing but we do see the ripples of all these different investigative steps that are going on not just with Mr. Clark but with other subpoenas and search warrants that were also served on Wednesday, also related to these -- the false electoral slate scheme.

KEILAR: So what are you expecting next? Are they working their way up the food chain? Are we going to see other searches?

STRZOK: I would expect that we would. I mean, this is a very logical way that investigations progress. To start working at the ground level and you want to build up to the ultimate target, which I think in this case is clearly former President Trump.

So before you get to that last point, I would expect to see what we're seeing now -- folks like Mr. Clark. And I would expect other senior members closer and closer to President Trump to the extent there are things certainly like subpoenas -- subpoenas for grand jury testimony, but also including search warrants. And, of course, if the evidence is there to support it, ultimately arrest warrants -- but that's coming down the line I would expect.

BERMAN: Peter Strzok, Donald Ayer, we appreciate you both being with us today. Thank you.

So, two strikingly different decisions on guns on Capitol Hill in Congress and in the Supreme Court. The details ahead.

KEILAR: Plus, we'll be joined by the mayor of Buffalo where 10 people were murdered inside of a grocery store. His reaction to these decisions ahead.

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[07:43:58]

BERMAN: For the first time in 30 years, the Senate, overnight, passed a major bipartisan gun safety bill. It happened on the same day that the Supreme Court issued a major ruling on guns, making it a bit easier to access firearms.

CNN's Lauren Fox live on Capitol Hill with the latest on this -- Lauren.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

Yes, yesterday, obviously a momentous day on Capitol Hill for Republican and Democratic negotiators who worked for just a little over four weeks to cement this deal.

And behind the scenes, I talked with all four negotiators yesterday about what they thought had the biggest impact. And one of the things that everyone that I talked to pointed to was the fact that both sides of leadership -- both leader Schumer as well as the minority leader Mitch McConnell -- got behind this deal relatively quickly. [07:45:00]

And on a call yesterday, McConnell told reporters that he viewed this as having a political upside as well as being the right thing to do in the moment.

And specifically, he said that we all know Republicans are winning in rural areas and small towns across America, but one area he said that Republicans were losing ground was in the suburbs. He said his hope was that passing this legislation, which got 15 Republican Senate votes, would actually help them in the midterms to take back the Senate. It gives a little sense of why so early in this process McConnell was supportive of Cornyn having these negotiations.

We should note that still leaves more than 30 Republicans -- the majority of the GOP conference -- who voted against this bill. But we expect that today the House is going to take this up. They will need to pass this bill quickly in order to get it signed and to the president's desk before lawmakers leave for their 2-week recess -- John.

BERMAN: All right, Lauren Fox. Thanks so much.

KEILAR: The historic Senate vote on the bipartisan gun deal coming on the heels of a landmark decision from the Supreme Court. Justices striking down a New York law that places restrictions on carrying a concealed gun outside of the home, making it easier to carry firearms in public.

Joining me to discuss here is CNN senior political analyst John Avlon, and CNN political commentator and editor-in-chief of The Dispatch, Jonah Goldberg.

Jonah, what did you think about the decision?

JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, THE DISPATCH: I thought it was not great timing given where the conversation is on guns these days politically. But the Supreme Court is not supposed to --

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

GOLDBERG: -- think about those things.

I think the decision is setting off a very predictable firestorm of reaction that I think is overdone. Within the four corners of the decision, I think it's pretty reasonable. I'm going to be nuanced to the point -- I'm going to be a prairie fire of nuance here. I think the decision is utterly defensible on its own terms. All it's doing is basically saying that New York needs to be more like the 43 other states that do it differently.

And that I think Clarence Thomas' point that you -- that you're not supposed to have -- the state is not supposed to say give me a good reason why you can exercise your constitutional rights. I think that is utterly defensible. On the other hand, I think criticisms of it are pretty defensible, too. George Will has a pretty good column on this saying yeah, maybe this is not -- it's not obvious that you have -- that New York City can't have these restrictions.

AVLON: Right.

Let me -- let me take up some of those criticisms because this isn't just about the concealed carry laws or onerous standards in New York. The downstream impact is massive with regard to concealed carry in public places.

The other real problem I've got is that Clarence Thomas spends the entire time saying look, this isn't about public safety. It's about history and tradition. History and tradition.

I mean, I -- someone forgot to tell him that in the Old West -- even in the Old West in the towns of Deadwood and Tombstone, and all these classic towns, you could not bring your guns to town. Not only to the bar, you couldn't bring them to town because that was a public safety measure.

So that's written in the history and tradition of the United States. And somehow, that detail got totally overlooked and it renders totally moot and frankly absurd -- the logic that was used to pass this law.

GOLDBERG: Yes. Look, I don't know. Look, I mean, in Heller, the Supreme Court said you actually have a constitutional right, which would probably have obviated a lot of those laws.

AVLON: Even in the -- in the home. I mean, it was --

GOLDBERG: Right, but you also had a little hint from, I think it was Gorsuch, saying look, if you're only allowed to carry a gun from the bedroom to the bathroom it kind of obviates the whole point of having the right to self-defense, which I agree with.

My point is that look, the way the 43 other states do it is you can still ban people of certain categories --

AVLON: Yes.

GOLDBERG: -- from carrying a gun -- felons, kids. You know, you could -- you can -- but you can't say -- you can't require that -- all it's saying is that the state needs a good reason to prevent you from carrying a gun. It can be you have to prove to the state that you have a good reason to own one.

AVLON: What we're doing is we're whittling down -- the court is whittling down the reasonable restrictions that Scalia delineated in Heller, right? And that was the point where there was a lot of common ground you could find. He said look, you know, there's a right to private gun ownership in the home for self-defense but we're not saying there's no room for reasonable restrictions. And a lot of folks said that's the common ground you can hang your hat on. But now here comes this decision that dramatically whittles away what those reasonable restrictions are even from a mayoral and public safety standpoint -- and this is what I think is interesting. And I used to work for a mayor of New York. And Eric Adams speaking out strongly against this -- not just the governor of New York.

This removes a lot of tools that local law enforcement have and it will increase the chances. If you've got concealed carry -- which only around a third of Americans think that you should have permit-less concealed carry -- that's now basically the new standard in public places from Times Square to the subways. And we'll have a whole series of new law -- of new court challenges to try to delineate what these reasonable restrictions are.

But we -- the court keep whittling away at this at the time where public opinion is moving dramatically in the other direction as a result of a public safety crisis.

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GOLDBERG: Yes. Look, in all these other cities around the country -- not New York, but like Dallas -- you have concealed carry permits of the -- of the sort --

AVLON: Wait, where's the --

GOLDBERG: -- and you're not seeing -- you're not seeing a massive wave of crime from people who go through the process of getting legal concealed carry permits.

AVLON: Well, let me ask you this though because this is an interesting point about conservatives. Where is the line here between local control, states' rights -- New York and Texas don't have to do it the same -- and this decision?

GOLDBERG: Look, I -- if we could come up with some grand compromise that sends 90% of state powers back to states and part of the cost of that would be more local gun control issues, I'd be happy to make that bargain. The problem is, first of all, you'd have to do something about --

AVLON: Yes.

GOLDBERG: -- the Constitution, the Second Amendment, and the 14th Amendment, which says that federal rights also apply -- supersede state rights.

AVLON: But this is the thing. The 14th Amendment keeps being expanded and reinterpreted, right? I mean, before Heller there hadn't been a decision since I think the - until the 1930s, you know? The NRA was a totally different organization at the time -- that it worked with the federal government to put restrictions on the sale of machine guns. That particular court case I think was about sawed-off shotguns.

So, again, it's where can we find some common-sense common ground. And the problem is because of the timing of this -- I mean, there's a new Gallup poll out yesterday showing only a quarter of Americans have confidence in the court. As it becomes more politicized and seen as more partisan, and as more decisions that fly in the face of supermajority opinion, that whittles away at the court's credibility, and that's a larger problem for our democracy.

GOLDBERG: Yes, but it's also a problem for democracy when you have people like Keith Olbermann saying that states should just simply ignore it. You know, going full Andrew Jackson, saying states should just ignore the Supreme Court. You have these --

AVLON: I'm not going to take the Olbermann strongman on that one, but --

GOLDBERG: Well, he's not a strongman. He's flesh and blood.

AVLON: Well, yes, but I don't think he's indicative of anything of Keith Olbermann. But I do think --

GOLDBERG: No. But look, you keep talking about packing the court.

AVLON: Sure. I --

GOLDBERG: You're talking about people --

AVLON: I couldn't - I couldn't -- I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think liberals' newfound love of federalism --

GOLDBERG: Right.

AVLON: -- is one of the many ironies we got from the Trump era.

GOLDBERG: Look, there is inconsistencies all over the place. Look, we've had progressives over the last five years literally call "Stop and Frisk" in New York, which was one of the key things to lower gun crime in New York, the moral equivalent of fugitive slave laws, right? So, like guns are evil but you can't use police powers to actually take illegal guns, which are the source of most of these sorts of things, away from people.

And I -- like, I --

AVLON: Here's some common ground, right? Here's some common ground, which is we should be listening more to law enforcement, and police officers, and mayors when it comes to these issues because they're the closest to the ground. And the fact that we're not doing that and opposing ideology, and inciting history and tradition while apparently, you're ignoring whole swaths of American history and tradition related to local control and restricting firearms, even in the Old West. That's what drives me crazy about this decision.

KEILAR: John and Jonah, you guys made my job very easy today.

AVLON: I'm sorry. That was just terrible what we just did.

KEILAR: I just -- you know, just --

GOLDBERG: Drop the hockey puck and I will go.

KEILAR: That's what I did and here I am at the end to wrap it up. It was great having you two. Thank you so much --

GOLDBERG: Thank you.

KEILAR: -- for the discussion. It was really, really informative.

The FDA calling for Juul e-cigarettes to be pulled off store shelves nationwide. So what led to their decision?

BERMAN: Are there signs that the January 6 hearings are starting to have an impact on Republican voters? There are some new numbers from a key state which raise serious questions.

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[07:57:40]

BERMAN: The Food and Drug Administration has ordered Juul to stop selling and distributing e-cigarettes on the U.S. market. The FDA adding those currently on the market must be removed from the shelves.

Joining me, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, what does this decision by the FDA mean?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's a -- it's a big one, John. We've been reporting on this for some time and I think even people who have been reporting on this were surprised at how significant a decision it was. They're basically saying all Juul products -- all the pods -- they had taken off fruit flavor some time ago John, but this is the tobacco flavors, the menthol flavors, the cartridges -- everything they say should be coming off the market.

They're even going into retail stores and saying pull your products. Don't sell this anymore.

The concern John, interestingly, was about safety. Was specifically saying there was concern that the pods -- these Juul pods could be leaching some toxic chemicals that could be harmful to human health. That's what the FDA focused on. They said Juul did not make the case strongly enough that that wasn't happening. So that's really what drove this decision -- a big one, John.

BERMAN: So, Sanjay, there have been arguments -- and you've been studying this issue for so long -- arguments that e-cigarettes can be a tool to help smokers quit traditional cigarettes. Has that been proven?

GUPTA: I think that's still a bit of an open question. I mean, first of all, there were sort of two points to the argument. One, does it help adults quit smoking, and what is the price to pay? How much do youth start vaping as a result?

I can show you just if you look at some of the data in terms of tobacco use overall among young you find 34% among high-schoolers, 11.3% among middle-schoolers. E-cigarettes were the biggest percentage of that. They had -- if you looked overall at the data, about 12% -- 11.8% of people who are using tobacco products actually were using these e-cigarettes. And it was around 2.8% for middle-schoolers.

Juul was the biggest Juuling and vaping were synonymous at one point. Since then there's been other e-cigarette manufacturers that have come onto the market.

But as far as whether it helps people stop smoking, there was data out of the U.K., John, that said yes. In fact, the U.K. Institute of Health said the data was strong enough that e-cigarettes were a recommended tool.

Here in the United States, I think the data has been a little more uneven. The latest data shows that other smoking cessation devices -- nicotine replacement, gums.