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Fallout over Defense Secretary's Hospitalization; Trump's Campaign and Courtroom Calendar Collide; Golden Globes Last Night. Aired 9:30-10a ET
Aired January 08, 2024 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[09:34:03]
SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: This morning Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin remains at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center as the fallout is growing over why the president, senior Pentagon officials and lawmakers were not notified for days that he was in the hospital. That omission apparently includes the Pentagon's number two.
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, two defense officials tell CNN, she was not notified that Austin was in the hospital, even when she began assuming some of his duties on January 2nd, one day after he was taken by ambulance to Walter Reed.
CNN national security reporter Natasha Bertrand is at the Pentagon.
Natasha, we know that Lloyd Austin is a very, very private person, but he is in this major public role. What are you learning this morning?
NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: That's exactly right. Anyone who knows Austin will tell you that he is an intensively private person and, of course, he did not want the details of his elective surgery that led to these complications to be public, and he has that right according to current and former officials that we have spoken to.
[09:35:01]
The issue is less that and more the fact that he entered the hospital on January 1st and spent several days in the intensive care unit and senior national security officials, and the White House, were not aware of that until about three days later with the one exception of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who notably is not in the chain of command. Other officials who are in the chain of command were not notified until much later in the week. And so the question now becomes, why was there such secrecy surrounding Secretary Austin's hospitalization. And what officials other have been telling us is that this really constitutes an unforced error. If the Pentagon had simply disclosed that he was hospitalized within 24 hours, you know, of his admission into Walter Reed, then there likely would not be so much contention around this issue.
But Pentagon officials here are deeply frustrated by the way that this played out, particularly because there is so much happening right now in the world, right? I mean there are two wars, there are major tensions in the Middle East, and just last week there was U.S. military strike in Baghdad during the time that the secretary was hospitalized. So, all of this, of course, not helping matters when the secretary of defense was essentially unavailable throughout the entirety of last week.
Now, we did get a statement from Secretary Austin on Saturday, and he acknowledged that there were concerns about the transparency about this issue, and he committed to doing better. But we have still not gotten many answers from the Pentagon about why these notifications were not made to senior officials until much later except to say that Austin's chief of staff was out sick herself and therefore was unable to make these notifications. The obvious response to that is, well, was there no one else available around the secretary to inform the White House at the very least that the secretary was hospitalized. But we have yet to get a answer to that question, Sara.
SIDNER: Natasha Bertrand, thank you so much. We'll be following the story. I know you will.
Kate.
Or John.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, does Donald Trump have immunity for crimes he may have committed in the White House. A huge argument before a federal court tomorrow.
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[09:41:34]
BERMAN: So, a huge legal moment for Donald Trump and the country. Tomorrow he will be at the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., arguing he should have immunity for whatever actions he took on January 6th.
With us now, CNN senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, Elie Honig.
I want to talk about tomorrow because the argument before the federal appeals court -- actually it's a panel of three judges, correct?
ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes.
BERMAN: Is over immunity.
HONIG: Yes.
BERMAN: What exactly does this mean?
HONIG: So, let's understand Donald Trump's argument, big picture here. He's saying that I can't be prosecuted in this case because what I am charged with doing here was in the scope of my job as president. Important distinction though, Donald Trump is actually not arguing that every single thing that happened during my endure four years is president I cannot be charged for. What -- his argument's a little narrower than that. He's saying, I can't be charged because it was while I was president, but also within the outer scope of my job as president. Now, he lost that argument before, Judge Chutkan, the district judge, forcefully rejected that and he's lost variations of that argument in other contexts, as have others, including Mark Meadows.
BERMAN: This has been decided at many different levels and many different ways regarding January 6th.
HONIG: Yes.
BERMAN: Civil and criminal. Mark Meadows, when he tried to remove the case to federal course, the judge have said, no, this wasn't part of your government job.
HONIG: Yes, really important to note, no judge, state, federal, at any level, for any person claiming that something they did in relation to January 6th was within their job, no judge has accepted that. They are -- the people claiming they were acting within the scope of their job are zero for all time. So, nobody yet has been given any sort of legal benefit on that road. This is one of the reasons I think Trump has a very steep uphill climb tomorrow.
BERMAN: All right, just talk to us about what we will see, or actually more appropriately hear, tomorrow at the federal appeals court.
HONIG: Yes, so you say that, of course, because there will be a live audio stream of tomorrow's argument but not cameras in the courtroom.
Now, we're at the middle level here, right? The district court, I said already, has rejected Trump's argument. This is the Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. This will be a three-judge panel selected randomly from the 15 judges on the circuit. One of the judges is a George H.W. Bush, the father, nominee from 1990. The other two are Biden nominees. The lawyers will be in the courtroom but -- the reporting is Trump will be, too, but he will be just in the back basically.
BERMAN: Right.
HONIG: The lawyers will stand at a podium. The first side, Trump side, will get 20 minutes to argue their case. Then Jack Smith's side. It probably won't be Jack Smith himself, but DOJ will get 20 minutes, and then there's 10 minutes for rebuttal by Trump's team. Those time limits go out the window pretty quickly though. And it's going to be - it's going to sound a little bit like a law school classroom. It's going to be just a Q&A on the law of the matter.
BERMAN: Relatively quick though, as far as these things go, and a lot of what's going to be argued is in briefings and paper that the judges will have to look at over the next few days.
HONIG: Yes.
BERMAN: When I say next few days, let's talk about the timing here because that might be the most important thing of all.
HONIG: Yes. So, really important here, Jack Smith is probably going to win this, but the question is, how much time will it take him to win this? In the ordinary course, if Donald Trump, let's assume he loses tomorrow, he would exhaust all his appeals. He can ask the entire circuit court, it's called en banc, to review this. Then he can go to the Supreme Court. In the ordinary course, that would take us well into the summer. We know Jack Smith is not willing to wait that long.
So, one thing he's asked the Court of Appeals to do is five days after you make your decision, send it back down to the trial court. We need to get the trial proceedings back on track.
So, a really important decision. Not only will the court of appeals rule for or against Jack Smith, but if they rule for him will they send it back down to the district court or will they keep it on pause.
[09:45:02]
Important to remember, the district court right now is what we called stayed, meaning it's on pause until this whole appeal gets resolved.
BERMAN: If they send it back down and say, get to work, get this trial on -
HONIG: Yes.
BERMAN: Can Trump still appeal that to the Supreme Court?
HONIG: He sure can, and he will. He will go to the Supreme Court and say, hang on, I'm not done yet. I haven't my appeal rights. I can ask the full circuit here. I can ask you, Supreme Court, to hear it. And until I've done that, it needs to remain paused. That is going to be, I think, make or break as to whether we see this trial before the election or not.
BERMAN: So the Supreme Court will have a say perhaps on the timing of this over the next - even this over the next several days and weeks.
HONIG: Yes.
BERMAN: Elie Honig, thank you very much.
HONIG: Thanks, John.
BERMAN: CNN's going to bring special coverage of this appeals court process. It all beginning at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time.
Kate.
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Coming up for us, winter weather alert stretching from Arizona to Wisconsin right now. What everyone needs to be prepared for.
And the official kickoff to the awards season. Last night's Golden Globes. One big moment of the night had nothing to do with the movies. It had to do with a host and a heckler.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JO KOY, COMEDIAN: Yo, I got the gig ten days ago. You want a perfect monologue. No. Shut up. You got -- you're kidding me, right? Slowdown. I wrote some of these, and they're the ones you're laughing at. Look.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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[09:50:11]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OPRAH WINFREY: And the Golden Globe goes to "Oppenheimer."
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the Golden Globe goes to "succession."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLDUAN: The 2024 awards season kicked off last night with the Golden Globes. "Succession," "Oppenheimer," they were the big winners of the night. "Barbie" walked away with only two awards, one for Billie Eilish's song "What Was I Made For," and another for a new category recognizing cinematic and box office achievement.
Let's get to it. CNN's Elizabeth Wagmeister, she has more on all of it.
Elizabeth, there are the awards, and there are also the most-talked- about moments of the show. What are people most still talking about this morning?
ELIZABETH WAGMEISTER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. Good morning, Kate.
Everybody is talking about this big night for "Oppenheimer." A really massive success for one of the biggest films of the year. Walked away with five awards, including the first-ever Golden Globe win for director Christopher Nolan in his entire career.
Now, as you said, "Barbie" did not come out as we predicted. But let's be honest, when you make $1.4 billion at the box office, you don't really need many awards.
Now, a lot of people are also talking about the host, comedian Jo Koy. A lot of people didn't know who he was before. He is a major comedian, has Netflix standup specials, sells out in arenas. But this was really his first big moment. But it is a joke about Taylor Swift that is being talked about. So, let's take look at that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JO KOY, COMEDIAN: As you know, we came on after a football double header. The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL, on the Golden Globes we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift. I swear. There (ph) just more to go to here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WAGMEISTER: Now, a lot of people think that this was some shade toward Taylor Swift, but I actually think it was shade toward the NFL, Kate. I think that Jo Koy was trying to say the NFL keeps cutting to Taylor Swift. Maybe we're not going to do that. But as you saw, she took a sip of her champagne there. Maybe didn't love that joke so much. Maybe was taking it in good fun. But that's another moment we have to talk about.
The existence of Taylor Swift at the Golden Globes is a huge deal in itself. She was nominated in the category of best box office and cinematic achievement. Lost to "Barbie," but Taylor Swift is really never losing, right?
BOLDUAN: That's what I was going to say, Taylor Swift can sip her champagne all the way to wherever she wants to go after the year that she's had.
WAGMEISTER: Exactly.
BOLDUAN: Also, I want to also ask you, because there's some news that happened also this morning in the world of entertainment. Actor Jonathan Majors, he has given his first interview since being found guilty of assault and harassment of a former girlfriend. He spoke to ABC News with "Good Morning America." What is he saying now?
WAGMEISTER: Yes, Jonathan Majors is saying that there was absolutely no physical violence. He, of course, as you've said, was convicted just a few weeks ago. And in this first interview, he is really maintaining his innocence.
We have a clip. So, let's take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JONATHAN MAJORS, ACTOR: I'm not in the car. None of this is happening. If I leave the relationship, none of this is happening. If I'm man enough or brave enough to say I want to see somebody else or I'm -- I'm done now, I'm not in that car. We're not here. I'm responsible for those things.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE, ABC NEWS: But none of her injuries?
MAJORS: Can't say that, none of her injuries.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WAGMEISTER: So, as you see there, he is taking responsibility for some of his actions in that relationship, which has been described as toxic and volatile. But he is, again, saying that there was absolutely no physical violence, and that the injuries that his ex-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari, claims that she obtained, he is not responsible for those injuries. Now, of course, we know Jonathan Majors, after this conviction, he was
fired by Marvel. He was set to be the future star of Marvel. So, it remains to be seen where his career goes from here.
BOLDUAN: Good to see you, Elizabeth. Thank you.
SIDNER: All right, get ready for a massive winter storm that is taking aim across the middle of the country starting today. Nearly 70 million people across the Gulf Coast and southeast are at risk for severe weather, including tornadoes, damaging wind, and flooding rain. By this afternoon, storms could start forming along the Gulf Coast.
[09:55:04]
The storm is expected to move quickly and cover 1,800 miles in just 72 hours, peaking, by the way, tomorrow as it heads into the eastern United States.
And the first U.S. lunar mission in decades took off into space this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Five, four, three, we have ignition, and liftoff of the first United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket, launching a new era in spaceflight to the moon and beyond.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: I still nerd out at these things. I love watching that. The privately built Peregrine lander is scheduled to touch down on the moon next month with equipment to gather data for future missions. It's part of NASA's preparations for eventual missions to Mars.
And an astonishing rescue in Japan. A woman in her 90s was pulled from the rubble of a two-story house more than five days after that powerful earthquake struck the country. She was rushed to the hospital where doctors say her legs were injured after being pinned by some furniture, but she is well enough now to talk. Officials say more than 3,300 people remain stranded in the area where that quake struck on New Year's Day. The death toll has now risen to 168 people with 323 still missing.
John.
BERMAN: All right, the Iowa caucuses just one week away. What are the can't-miss moments you'll want to see on the campaign trail today.
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