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Former Oath Keepers Spokesman Testifies Before House January 6th Committee; House January 6th Committee Attempting to Tie Trump Administration Officials with Far Right Extremist Groups in Planning January 6th Insurrection; Surveillance Video Shows Texas Police Retreating After First Shots. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired July 13, 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: Important reminders, John. Thank you so much.

And NEW DAY continues right now.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to viewers here in the U.S. and around the world. It is Wednesday, July 13th, and I'm Brianna Keilar with John Berman.

Eye-opening new text messages, potential witness tampering by the former president, and a bruising, unhinged meeting in a bid to keep Donald Trump in power. The January 6th committee laying out fresh evidence of Trump's involvement with the attack on the Capitol. And while yesterday's hearing did not draw a direct link between Trump and rightwing extremists, new evidence revealed the former president planned for a march on the Capitol and he wanted it to appear spontaneous.

The hearing included testimony from convicted rioter Stephen Ayres who explained how he was riled up by Trump's speech and followed his directions to go to the capitol. Ayres later apologized to a group of Capitol police officers who were injured that day, but not everyone accepted it.

BERMAN: There was a surprising text exchange with Trump's former campaign manager Brad Parscale who wrote essentially that Trump's rhetoric killed someone and blamed his former boss for the deadly violence.

And for the first time we saw clips of testimony from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone. He described a chaotic Oval Office meeting laced with profanity, screaming, and fantasies on how to overturn the election.

The panel's vice chair, Liz Cheney, closed the session with a huge new piece of potential information, saying that Trump tried to contact a witness who has not yet appeared before the committee. The committee referred it to the Justice Department.

KEILAR: Also appearing before the committee was former Oath Keepers spokesperson Jason Van Tatenhove, who shared his fears of another Trump White House.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JASON VAN TATENHOVE, FORMER SPOKESMAN FOR OATH KEEPERS WHO TESTIFIED BEFORE JANUARY 6TH COMMITTEE: I do fear for this next election cycle, because who knows what that might bring. If a president that's willing to try to instill and encourage, to whip up a civil war amongst his followers using lies and deceit and snake oil, and regardless of the human impact, what else is he going to do if he gets elected again?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And Jason is joining us now along with his attorney, Raphael Prober. Jason, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

I do want to ask you, you talked there about this prospect of Trump whipping up his supporters into a civil war, and you also talked during your testimony about the Oath Keepers and how they're prepping for a new civil war. What would that look like? What do the Oath Keepers prep for?

JASON VAN TATENHOVE, FORMER SPOKESMAN FOR OATH KEEPERS WHO TESTIFIED BEFORE JANUARY 6TH COMMITTEE: Well, military training has always been a part of it, is always encouraged. Weapon -- carrying of weapons, it just, it was a military mindset. It was very much trying to create this narrative that they were this paramilitary organization amongst the members.

KEILAR: But specifically, I mean, what would a civil war look like in their minds?

VAN TATENHOVE: Well, I don't know how far they've gotten into the end game thoughts on that, but I think what we saw on January 6th is certainly very much how it would look to start out, because I think we came very, very close to having a civil war kick off on January 6th.

KEILAR: You were involved --

VAN TATENHOVE: But as far as --

KEILAR: Sorry. Go on.

VAN TATENHOVE: I was just going to say as far as, as far as what an actual civil war would look like, I don't think it would actually last that long. The numbers just aren't there. But it's the inspiration, it's the -- who is it going to influence next? We need to just stop this type of rhetoric.

KEILAR: So you were involved with the Oath Keepers going back years through the Bundy Ranch standoff. Do you feel like signs were missed or that signs continue to be missed about some of the dangers here, or do you feel like the federal government is pretty keyed into the dangers of extremism?

VAN TATENHOVE: I think the federal government itself is very keyed into the dangers of extremism. I think we miss it. I think the American people maybe miss it and don't realize just what a clear and present danger it really is.

KEILAR: What would you say to President Trump today?

VAN TATENHOVE: I don't know if I would want to say anything to him. I would encourage him not to run and maybe just evaluate some of his decisions he's made in his life.

[08:05:03]

I really think that he has done this country a lot of harm, and I think these are conversations that we've been having in our living rooms since the end of the Trump era, and it's time for us to really begin having national conversations, which we're beginning to do, just about how damaging and just how crazy this bedlam got.

KEILAR: When you listen to the Oath Keepers or you hear from their attorneys, they talk about how there was this belief that Trump was going to assert the Insurrection Act and the Oath Keepers were going to be there to sort of reinforce it or provide security. Where do you think they got that idea?

VAN TATENHOVE: I think this is something Stewart had been playing with for years. He is a Yale-educated attorney. I think he's been looking for ways to kind of justify the existence of Oath Keepers and feed this fantasy of becoming this paramilitary leader that I believe he has had. I assume he found it in his legal research and different papers he had written, and it just was something that has kind of been in the back of his head.

KEILAR: You obviously got away from the Oath Keepers a few years ago, but even then, who, if anyone, in the Trump orbit was Stewart Rhodes in contact with in the past?

VAN TATENHOVE: Well, I don't have any direct knowledge of this, but I do know of different meetings because I was invited to some. By that time, I had gotten out, but I still had people reaching out and letting me know what was going on. And there were attempts by the Trump administration to connect with militia leaders, different members of that community in the desert of Nevada back during the first election cycle.

KEILAR: Who?

VAN TATENHOVE: Well, to be honest with you, it was Roger Stone is what I heard. But it was -- this is hearsay, it was a call, I wasn't directly involved. But that is something that I heard, and it does seem to line up with what we're finding with the newly released evidence, and it does seem to make sense.

KEILAR: Who was involved with that call, as you understood it?

VAN TATENHOVE: Various leaders of different groups. I mean, obviously the Bundys were right there. But -- and I was not there, I only had a call with an invite. But I can say that, I assume it would be other leaders within the militia communities and what we would term the patriot communities. KEILAR: And what did you understand the objective of that outreach to

be?

VAN TATENHOVE: To my understanding I believe, just my own opinion I think they were trying to open lines of communication even back then, even before Trump was elected, that there was something in someone's mind in the administration to begin opening lines of communication. And obviously we saw that communication must have been somewhat successful.

KEILAR: You think that there's a line potentially between that and what happened on January 6th?

VAN TATENHOVE: Well, we saw the Oath Keepers providing direct security for Roger Stone. We've seen the leaders of these communities coming together and having clandestine meetings. We're seeing these signal chats come out that were encrypted that are revealing more and more that that seems to be the case.

KEILAR: There's a question, obviously I think we're seeing what President Trump was doing, what he was hoping would happen, was planning would happen on January 6th. But there's still a big question about whether there's any legal culpability here, whether the Department of Justice would pursue any charges against him. If nothing happens to Trump, if he suffers no consequences, how do you think extremists like the Oath Keepers will view that?

VAN TATENHOVE: I think they will see it as a win, and I think they will be further emboldened. We saw that type of progression happening when the Bundys were able to use a kind of jury nullification argument. And we really haven't seen account for these armed standoffs. And each time something like that happens and the leadership gets off scot-free, it's always the people that were motivated and fell victim to the messaging and propaganda that pay the price. But the leadership really hasn't. And I think that every time that happens, they see that as a win.

[08:10:00]

And it just increases that boldness and feeling like they're having these victories, so what's the next step they're going to take. We've seen this progression from Bundy Ranch through to January 6th.

KEILAR: You worry about an escalation beyond January 6th?

VAN TATENHOVE: Yes. Yes. If Trump is back in power, and who knows what he's going to do with the ability to pardon. I really do fear for what might happen if Trump gets back into office. And I think I'm not alone in that. Again, I think these are conversations that Americans have been having on their couches, sitting in front of their TV, across their dining room tables, talking about these very subjects. And I think in a lot of ways, we've been mincing words. When it comes to the events of January 6th, that was not just some sort of peaceful protest. That was a mob, that was a violent mob, and people died. And we need to just start really calling things as they are. I think we need to stop pussyfooting around and really just start having hard conversations and calling things out for what they were.

KEILAR: Jason, thank you for your time this morning. We appreciate it. Raphael, thank you as well for being with us.

VAN TATENHOVE: Thank you.

BERMAN: All right, here with us now, contributing columnist for the "Washington Post" George Conway and CNN contributor and former Nixon White House counsel John Dean. George, I want to start with you, counselor, just for a quick reaction on what we just heard there. And again, it was hearsay. He wasn't saying that he knows Roger Stone was in contact with the Oath Keepers in 2016. But, again, it's Roger Stone and the Oath Keepers in the same sentence here. The overall significance?

GEORGE CONWAY, ATTORNEY: Well, the significance is we know that there are links between the Oath Keepers and Roger Stone. I think he was using them for security at one point. And I think it dove tails with a couple open questions that were left yesterday. One, was how did some of the Stop the Steal organizers know that Trump was going to spontaneously urge them to march to Capitol Hill? There was some connection there between Ali Alexander and the White House. Was it through Stone? Was it through Giuliani? Was it through Bannon? We don't know. And there is a lot of unexplored territory there, the connections between the people who ended up going up to Capitol Hill or organizing that rally, and the White House.

BERMAN: This gets to my basic overall question, which is legally speaking -- I know this wasn't a legal hearing -- what's different today based on what we heard from yesterday? And for that, I just want to play a little bit of Vice Chair Liz Cheney, how she made her argument.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. LIZ CHENEY, (R-WY): President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child. No rational or sane man in his position could disregard that information and reach the opposite conclusion. And Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: OK, John, willfully blind, carefully chosen words. Why? And beyond that the legal significance or progress that was made by the committee yesterday.

JOHN DEAN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: For those who don't know what willfully blind is, it's just turning away and not looking when you know misbehavior is occurring. It was used a lot in the drug cases where people would, say, launder money. They would say I didn't know that was drug money. But it's a well-refined concept in the law, and it can be used very effectively. That's what Trump maybe trying to do. But she's pinning right early and saying we're not going to coal rate this. KEILAR: John, what did you think about some of these unanswered

questions that George raises from yesterday about how did they -- assuming many of them knowing that Trump was going to call for them to go to the Capitol, even though it wasn't in the actual speech, Trump was ad-libbing it even though he planned to say it, what does that mean to you?

DEAN: Well, we did learn that he had tipped his hand to several people. So the word had probably gone out quietly, they knew what they were supposed to do when they got there. They were loading their arms and putting them over in Virginia. They were ready to do whatever was necessary. So I think there was more -- the breach was huge, but not for any way other than to help the Trump supporters who were there to cause trouble.

BERMAN: And George, the fact that there is evidence, it seems, that it was planned, and the fact there is evidence, it seems, that it was attempted to be kept quiet, what does the combination there mean?

CONWAY: That combination is you've got a conspiracy, because there's -- potentially a conspiracy because you have got information flow, people are talking to one another, and not every person has to talk to everyone else in the conspiracy. The information flow is very interesting for that.

[08:15:02]

And the fact that it was concealed shows the potential criminal intent because it shows that you knew you were doing something wrong, something that you would be called out on, and so you didn't want it to be revealed until the very moment you wanted to bring it out.

So both of those -- I mean, those are very interesting questions raised by those facts. I don't think it's necessary for us to answer all of those questions, to determine Donald Trump's criminal liability because the fact of the matter is he did other things. You know, we have the vague electoral certificates, we have the attempt to compromise -- to corruptly influence the vice president, we have -- we have the attempt to corruptly influence state legislatures and in particular, Georgia's Secretary of State Raffensperger. We have all of that.

This could add -- you know, at a minimum what Trump did on January 6th and the callout to the -- to his supporters, to be wild on December 19th, that adds to the idea that he was ready to use any means necessary to stop the counting of electoral votes on January 6th, which he knew was the last step necessary for the election of Joe Biden. And he should have -- what happened was -- this should have been done as Cipollone said on December 14th when those votes were signed -- the electoral votes were signed and sealed and ultimately delivered to the Capitol.

And, you know, the fact that he was still -- he knew he had to stop them from being counted and there was no legal way to do that. He was told left and right there is no legal way to stop this so he was resorting to potentially illegal means trying to persuade his vice president about violated duties and encouraging a mob.

DEAN: His weapon was the crowd.

KEILAR: And yet, are we in a place where any more of what we have heard would stop Donald Trump from pursuing another run for the White House?

CONWAY: No. No. It's actually encouraging him to do it.

KEILAR: And where does that leave us?

CONWAY: That leaves us with two years of possible hell. He's going to run and unless -- you know, if there are multiple people running against him, he may -- he could get the nomination with 35 or 40 percent of the vote. That's basically what he did in 2016 because of the way the rules are set up and because a fractured field.

This is not going to be -- this campaign that he would run isn't going to be the kind of campaign that sensible political advisers would tell him to run which would be about gas prices and so on and so forth. It's going to be about him because this is stirring him up. This is -- he's getting crazier and crazier if you look at his Truth Social feed. This is driving him nuts.

And one of the things about this hearing is it's going to make him more obsessed with litigating -- re-litigating the 2020 election and he's going to say a lot of crazy stuff.

BERMAN: Can I play a moment that came during CNN's post-hearing coverage that wasn't exactly about the hearing itself, but I think raised a lot of eyebrows. This was when our friend Jake Tapper was talking to John Bolton former national security adviser, former ambassador to the U.N. about the idea of a coup. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: One doesn't have to be brilliant to attempt a coup.

JOHN BOLTON, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: I disagree with that. As somebody who has helped plan coup d'etat, not here but other places it takes a lot of work. And that's not what he did.

It was just stumbling around from one idea to another. Ultimately, he did unleash the rioters at the Capitol. As to that, there's no doubt. But not overthrow the Constitution, to buy more time to throw the matter back to the states to try to redo the issue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: It was the first part of that, I think, that people were like, oh, really? As someone who has helped plan coup d'etats, John.

DEAN: It's going to be in the next book. I can't testify about it right now, I can't appear on it or go under oath about it but it will be a hell of a book. CONWAY: It's a remarkable thing for him to say. I don't know, it

brings back like the Nixon era. (INAUDIBLE). I don't know what he's talking about.

But he has -- he does have a point. We are fortunate. We are fortunate today in this country that Donald Trump is an incompetent and that he basically, you know -- he was just flailing about and didn't -- didn't know what he was doing and was just randomly doing things and listening to crazy people.

And we're very fortunate in a lot of ways over his four years term that he was incompetent.

KEILAR: How vulnerable, though, is the system, John, even to an incompetent?

DEAN: Fragile. We assume it's much stronger that (AUDIO GAP) actually think that the weapon is going to go against him at (AUDIO GAP).

[08:20:06]

BERMAN: All right. John, George -- which I guess makes us Paul and Ringo -- thank you both very much for being with us.

(LAUGHTER)

KEILAR: Who are you?

BERMAN: I'm Paul.

KEILAR: I will be Ringo. All right.

BERMAN: So just released, horrifying -- excuse me -- just released, you are looking at it right here, this horrifying surveillance footage of the 77 minutes police officers spent in the hallway of the Robb Elementary School as the mass shooting there was carried out. How the community is responding this morning.

KEILAR: And you are looking at some live pictures, President Biden landing in Israel moments ago ahead of a high stakes trip through the Middle East. We are going to go there live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: All right. Chilling surveillance video taken from inside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on the day of the mass shooting. The video has been leaked to the public. The 77-minute video was released on YouTube by the "Austin-American Statesman" that edited the audio from inside the classrooms.

We do want to note that CNN is not airing the audio of the gunfire until the gunman is killed. Nonetheless, the video is disturbing and hard to watch.

The video begins with a truck crash near the school at 11:32 a.m., the first shots fired outside the school, then a 911 call from a frantic teacher.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

TEACHER: The kids are running. Oh, my God! Get down! Get in your rooms! Get in your rooms!

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BERMAN: One minute later at 11:33, the gunman is caught on surveillance camera entering the empty hallway unhindered. He walks in, it looks casually with his gun hanging down. He slows down around a corner then keeps on walking toward the classrooms.

A boy sees the gunman and begins to run as shots are fired. Three minutes later seven police officers arrive, several head down the hallway toward the classrooms, others hang back, and a minute later shots are heard, 16 rounds in total. Police are seen retreating. One of them appears to touch his ear.

Then for the next 40 minutes, we see more officers arriving, heavily armed, still they wait and wait and wait. One even uses the school- supplied hand sanitizer on the wall. Then at about 12:50 p.m., about 74 minutes after the gunman first entered the school - first entered the school --

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)

BERMAN: With me now is Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez who represents Uvalde in his district.

Senator, thank you so much for being with us.

[08:25:01]

What's your reaction to what you see in that video?

STATE SEN. ROLAND GUTIERREZ (D-TX): Thank you, John. I appreciate the time.

First off, I'm really concerned for families that were promised a preview so that they could prepare themselves on Sunday and I want to apologize on behalf of the state of Texas. It's my understanding that not only the committee members, DPS and the governor's office have seen this, but also eight members of the legislature who have signed nondisclosure agreements.

So somebody leaked this and unfortunately, those families had to bear this. The video is horrible as it seems, it's a made for TV moment, it's an edited version of that hallway footage. It's got picture in picture as you've seen and it doesn't really show the entire picture.

I know this because I've testified to this before, I've seen about three minutes of the initial video and it seems to me that the Republicans simply don't want to show that we're really talking about, which is the awesome power of this AR-15. There is a version that I have seen and there is a poster on a wall

that says congratulations, you can see that, and you can see those seven officers from a different angle, and you actually see them go into that hallway and you see construction material flying over their heads as they're crouching down to avoid being hit. They get repelled twice.

And yet, the Republican Party has shown us props of doors, we've seen props of windows in these committee hearings, but we have never seen a prop of an AR-15. This is what killed these children. This is what these children had to deal with and those officers chose not to deal with.

BERMAN: Why does the power of the AR-15 and you just brought this up, why does the power of this rifle matter to you? And I just will note, the officers there they were all armed, they were all what some people call good guys with guns.

GUTIERREZ: Absolutely. And it matters to me because I feel at times that over the last 50 days we have gotten lost on the messaging, first and foremost, those families and those -- they're never going to get their children back, but to the ones that are activating and are asking for change, they're asking government to change the laws with regard to these types of weapons. They don't want this to ever happen to another family again.

And it's a shame that we're given a video that's highly edited and we're not showing the version that I saw in a trailer and I was kicked out of that trailer a week after this incident where you see material literally flying over policemen's heads, you see that one officer that gets nicked in the head from a different angle. And that is what caused these police to fortify themselves, if you will.

It's what unfortunately those little babies had to endure for 77 minutes and yet we're not talking about that because the Republicans don't want us to talk about guns. They want us to talk about other things.

BERMAN: Senator, based on this video and apparently the other video you have seen, what are your feelings about the police response?

GUTIERREZ: The police response on this day was horrible. They all chose to violate the protocol of the incident -- of the mass shooters, of the active shooter, all of them.

To point at the local school cop who, by the way, I hardly see in this version of the video, I hardly see DPS troopers. We know from their testimony that 12 of them were in that hallway, in and out of that hallway.

So we had a massive number of police in those 77 minutes, as many as 360, we had 91 DPS troopers and yet we're seeing edited versions of video presented by I can only presume DPS to this committee.

This isn't Hollywood. We deserve to see all of the footage. We deserve to have it dismantled, presented by independent groups like the FBI. We need to be able to see what truly happened here.

I'm asking Dustin Burrows to show that version of the video that shows the construction material flying over these people. And that's important because what she is families are asking for is they're asking to stop the distribution of these weapons in some instances, they're asking for government in Texas to raise the age limit on access to into weaponry.

People need to know how very dangerous and extreme and awesome that AR-15 and the kind of damage that it can do.

BERMAN: And mostly these families --

GUTIERREZ: It's horrible, it's horrible.

BERMAN: -- these families want communication, good, honest, frequent communication is what they're asking for.

State Senator Roland Gutierrez, we appreciate your time this morning. Thank you.

GUTIERREZ: Thank you so much.

KEILAR: All right. Let's go live now to Tel Aviv where CNN's --

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