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Source: Harris' Struggles on Border Question Seen As Part of Pattern; Biden Reassures NATO Allies: "The United States is There"; Biden Hopes for NATO Springboard Ahead of Putin Summit; Sessions, Barr, Rosenstein Deny Knowledge of Secret Subpoenas; Federal Judge Rules TX Hospital Can Require Employee Vaccinations. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired June 14, 2021 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And that is where we find the Vice President today as she will be visiting a proper vaccination site rallying some community organizers who are going to go out and share the word about safety and efficacy of this Coronavirus vaccine to try and pump up vaccine rates in this State of South Carolina which is lagging about 10 points behind the national average in terms of vaccination rates. Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Jeremy, thank you so much. And thank you all so much for joining us at this hour. John King picks up our coverage now.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Hello, everybody. Welcome to "Inside Politics". I'm John King in Washington. Thanks for sharing your very busy day with us.

President Biden meeting on the sidelines of the NATO Summit with Turkey's President confronting China is an official NATO talking point for the first time. And the Brussels show of unity sets the stage for the Biden/Putin Summit. Plus, the Attorney General taps the Justice Department watchdog to investigate a giant question.

Why does the Trump Justice Department snoop on the Trump White House Counsel? And a big shift in the Middle East, Israel has a new government today. Bibi Netanyahu is now opposition leader. He fails to topple the coalition that ended his 12 year rule.

Up first for us this hour the giant global stakes this week for the new American President this hour, a potential conflict point on the NATO schedule. President Biden holding a bilateral meeting with the Turkish President Erdogan, the President again assuring allies today the United States is there those are his words in his rejoinder to the fractures of the Trump era.

Modernizing NATO is a constant refrain, but the urgency of the moment is obvious. And there are new promises for NATO teamwork in the fight against cybercrime and the climate crisis. President Biden hopes the NATO show of unity gives him momentum heading into a Geneva confrontation with the Russian President Vladimir Putin. Let's get straight to CNN's Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan

Collins, who was in Brussels, Kaitlan?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, John. I mean, you're already seeing again, kind of what we saw at the G7 Summit where NATO allies are welcoming a President Biden presence here instead of President Trump, who often derided NATO.

Once called it obsolete and went after them for how much they were spending on defense, of course, but something else that you're also seeing new here at this NATO Summit is the mention of China and this focus of these 30 member nations on a rising China and on an aggressive Russia as well.

So that is the focus of President Biden's meeting earlier today, where it was just essentially all of the members speaking briefly about their goals while they were here. But this meeting that is going to happen any moment now is another key one to watch, because this is one of the biggest bilateral that President Biden is hosting here with the Turkish President Erdogan someone he has only spoken to once since he took office.

And during that conversation, it was so President Biden could inform President Erdogan that he was going to be recognizing the Armenian Genocide, something that of course, past presidents had avoided doing because they did not want to infuriate Turkey.

He did that Turkey was unhappy, but his reaction was a lot more muted, I think than most Americans had predicted that it would be. And of course, we do know that they have a slew of topics to discuss.

But one big one is Russia and that upcoming Summit with President Putin. And President Biden's National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has already said he does expect the President to compare notes with Erdogan about Putin in this meeting, essentially to prepare him for what is going to happen in that sit down that they're having in Geneva on Wednesday.

Something that President Biden is really kind of taking the temperature not just from Erdogan but from multiple other world leaders even discussed it with the Queen John. And so this is really all of this builds up to see what that final meeting is going to look like in Geneva?

KING: Kaitlan Collins live in Brussels appreciate the live reporting. With me in studio to share their reporting and their insights CNN's Dana Bash CNN's Kylie Atwood Zolan Kanno-Youngs of "The New York Times" and Seung Min Kim, of "The Washington Post".

I want to apologize in advance if the bilateral meeting with the Turkish President begins, we may have to break up the conversation. That is one of the many important meetings. You have a big summit then the president routinely meets with other leaders on the sidelines, a constant refrain, we heard this at the G7 and now we hear it again from the President at NATO is this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Article five - as a sacred obligation. I just want all of Europe to know that the United States is there. The United States is there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: My translation; I'm not Donald Trump, things are different. Why is that so important for the President to say at every stop?

SEUNG MIN KIM, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Because of all the frankly ruckus that the former president caused in his international relations over the four years that I know that even our European allies, not only had they welcomed the United States sort of back into the fold, but they're also skeptical here.

Because they do see the political winds of the United States and they see how tenuous things are and they're not convinced that a Trump - first of all, Trump himself or a Trump like figure is not going to come back in just a short amount of time.

So Biden - the President Biden is out there, really trying to ensure our allies that the United States is fully engaged in global relations that you know all the tenets of NATO that President Trump shunned are now back and this is something that the United States values.

[12:05:00]

KIM: So he is spreading that message, every chance that he gets over the next several days.

KING: This is the NATO communique. And it's a long document; it runs 20 something pages if you printed out. A lot of it is familiar if you've covered these in the past language about Russia language about Russian aggression, language about what do we do to help the alliance and 30 countries in the neighborhood deal with Russia.

But there's some new language in this communique, and it's about China. It says China's growing influence in international policies can present challenges that we need to address together as an alliance; we will engage China with a view to defending the security interests of the alliance.

This is new NATO setup to counter the Soviets are now dealing with the new world. Many have said this is proof that President Biden is having an impact on his first foreign trip convincing these countries. Yes, we have to deal with Russia. Yes, we have to deal with the traditional challenges. I need your help with China.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: And you heard the President singled that out also yesterday when he spoke to reporters at the G7 as well. I mean, he took time to basically say, look, we need to challenge China's growing influence both economic wise.

He was saying we need an alternative plan when it comes to infrastructure investment, whether it is in Latin America or Africa as well? You know, we need a plan that calls for more transparency as well. He was saying one that advocates more for climate change causes as well.

But also there was an interesting thing in that joint statement there were all of the leaders at the G7 were also calling for more transparency and access to investigate the origins of COVID as well. And we know there are questions there.

President Biden, I thought had a very interesting statement yesterday where he said and repeated we haven't reached a conclusion when it comes to those origins so another theme there for him calling out China as well.

KING: And a lot of this the G7 than the NATO Summit conversations with Europeans. It's all sort of a preview to get you to Geneva and to get you to Putin, essentially, Biden trying to say, yes, there are two of us in this room, but I come with a lot of friends.

Everybody in the G7 is concerned about this, President Putin; listen to him here in this interview with NBC. We know he interfered in the last two U.S. Presidential Elections. We know that both Russia as a state and Russia allow criminal networks essentially to exist inside Russia. We know that because it's pretty obvious and U.S. Intelligence Services has the data but as the Russian president, he says--

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, are you waging a cyber war against America?

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIA: There is the evidence is because there is proof it's becoming farcical.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why would you let Russian speaking criminals disrupt your diplomacy?

PUTIN: You know the simplest thing to do would be for us to sit down calmly, and agree on joint work in cyberspace.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are the ones who have refused to engage in joint work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We've watched the President on his first international trip, once he was asked again, why does he keep doing this? He said, well, he's Vladimir Putin very low expectations, and yet a very important message for the new American President to deliver?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. And that interview is Exhibit A of why on Wednesday; we are not going to see a joint press conference with President Biden and President Putin?

And you talked about the statement that President Biden gave yesterday; one of the answers that he gave was about why they're not going to appear in public together. It's basically because he doesn't want to give Putin the platform, because he knows that he's not going to be telling the truth.

And why give him that, you know, that push that help, when the real message needs to be delivered in private, the tough messages that he is planning to give, along with what he is bringing, as you said, which is all that clear support from the NATO and G7 countries.

KING: So what are the pros at the State Department say lay as a metric for how you can judge this conversation to be a success? You're not going to get Putin suddenly say, oh, I'll be a good guy. But that's not going to happen.

But what did they lay in the sense that - in the sense that the Obama Administration said it was going to reset things with Russia? If you go back before that George W. Bush said he looked into his soul, you know, the Trump Administration - the administration itself did do some tough things against Russia, but the president said he believed Putin when he said he was a good guy.

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, I think you don't see this administration using the word reset at all here, right? They've been very clear. And when Russia meddles in U.S. or does things that are aggressive, there is going to be a cost.

And they demonstrated that earlier this year with sanctions, right? So they've already done that. But I think, coming out of this Summit, it's very clear that both of these countries essentially have agreed that this is as low as it's ever been since the Cold War, and things need to stabilize.

That's why we've heard from the Biden Administration that they want to see a predictable relationship with Russia. Now I think there are some questions about what a predictable relationship with Russia can be given that their playbook essentially is to do things that are on predictable.

[12:10:00]

ATWOOD: But I do think coming out of this if we can see that President Biden delivered clear messages on some of these things that in and of itself face to face is viewed as a victory for a lot of folks at the State Department who had to endure years of President Trump saying just the opposite privately to President--

BASH: If I can just quickly add to that I interviewed the Secretary of State Tony Blinken yesterday. And one of the questions still has been whether or not it even makes sense for President Biden to meet with Vladimir Putin because things are so bad. And the argument that he continues to make is it's because things are so bad that they have to meet.

KING: Eyeball to eyeball. Before we end the segment, I just to bring in some other disturbing reporting you're part of this Tyson Nuclear Plant in China being monitored now for a leak. And the question is how significantly?

ATWOOD: Yes, that that is the bottom line here. Why was there this alarming report from this French Company coming to the U.S. government to the Department of Energy about what they called an imminent threat of this possible leak?

If now the company and the actual Chinese folks who have been operating this entity are saying that there wasn't actually a problem. And so there are a lot of questions about this, particularly when it comes to China in transparency.

But I think the bottom line here is that there were concerns about this, this threat this leak that is happening, and U.S. officials have been focused on it.

KING: We'll stay on top of it to figure out if it's just insignificant, significant or worse Kiley Atwood grateful for that. Up next for us another extraordinary subpoena this time, Trump's Justice Department obtained phone records belonging to the then President's own White House Counsel.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

KING: Attorney General Merrick Garland today promising a new looks at Justice Department rules and guidelines dealing with when it can subpoena records of members of Congress and their staff? The new promise comes amid new revelations about extraordinary steps the Trump Justice Department took to keep tabs on at least two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.

Plus, we learned over the weekend, the Trump DOJ got a subpoena for email and phone records of the Trump White House Counsel, Don McGahn. CNN's Manu Raju joins our conversation. This is a giant wow, when you think about it.

So let's start - let's start with the current Attorney General in a democratic administration, whose job is to figure out what happened in the prior administration and facing a ton of questions. So let's put this up. Let's put this up first. This is the Speaker of the House talking to you yesterday about you know, we have a thing called the Congress and we want answers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): What the administration did the Justice Department or leadership of the Former President goes even beyond Richard Nixon? How could it be that there could be an investigation of other members in the other branch of government and the press and the rest too? And the attorneys general did not know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: I want to come back to the last part in a minute, but she's the Speaker of the House. Democrats could call up Merrick Garland, if they wanted to. They could call up the current Attorney General. And you do hear some frustration among Democrats saying OK, we run this town now. Why can't we get answers? What's the problem? BASH: Right now privately, what I'm hearing is they're trying to give Merrick Garland a little bit, a little bit emphasized little of time and space to try to do his own digging, obviously. Now there's an ID investigation Inspector General, which perhaps complicates that a bit.

But it's noteworthy that the House is not jumping on the subpoena train. It's the Senate and Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin, who's the Judiciary Chairman in the Senate, who are saying we're going to subpoena it's not that they're not going to be aggressive in the House.

They're just trying to you know get the help from their friend at the top of the Justice Department. But it is noteworthy that there's not all that there are a lot of Democrats who are not pleased with the way Merrick Garland is continuing a lot of investigations even separate from this.

KING: And so to the subpoena part, you have - it started under Jeff Sessions, when he was the first Trump Attorney General, continued, many would say reinvigorated under Barr the second Attorney General. Rod Rosenstein was the Deputy Attorney General who carried over both for at least a period of time.

All three of them say they know nothing about this, how can that be it? So that's the power of a subpoena, at least put them under oath. So they have to say that under oath that carries a lot more weight. But it's to me, it's scarier.

If you have two attorneys general and a deputy attorney general who essentially running the day to day department who did not know this was happening. That's scary.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Especially it's something so significant going after the news media, going after two prominent members of Congress, the House Intelligence Committee Chairman trying to get his records. The Attorney General didn't know about that.

Yes, that's the important of getting - importance of getting them under oath. But it is interesting how the Democrats are playing this subpoena game, as Dana was alluding to, because the House they have the power under the rules, and the majority.

Democrats can subpoena anyone tomorrow, if they want to do that - they just have a 72 simple majority vote in the Senate, you need to have bipartisan support in the Senate Judiciary Committee. You need to have Dick Durbin the Judiciary Chairman needs Chuck Grassley or another Dem Republican signing off on that.

They don't have that yet. And Chuck Grassley came out last week, raising concerns - saying essentially, they didn't have that much concern about what was happening here is there's kind of normal for these kind of investigations take place when other Republicans have been quiet about this. So we'll see exactly what comes up with these democratic push to investigate maybe not a whole lot.

KING: Yes, if this were about the Obama Administration, or Hillary Clinton's emails, they'd be just as quiet. We all know that, right?

RAJU: Right.

KING: That's the sad part of it. And we don't know a lot. We don't know a lot because he's a secret subpoenas. But we do know, at roughly the time this was all playing out. The cart - the President of the United States at that time spoke out quite publicly about things that made him mad.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, 45TH U.S. PRESIDENT: I've actually called the Justice Department to look into the leaks. Those are criminal leaks. Leaks are real. You know what they said you saw it. And the leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake. We're going to find the leakers.

[12:20:00]

TRUMP: We're going to find the leakers. They're going to pay a big prize for leaking.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We know that he blamed Congressman Swalwell and Congressman Schiff; he publicly pointed to them sometimes blaming them for leaks. They say they were not the leakers. We also know there were times when he was suspicious of his own White House Counsel, Don McGahn and we now know that - just think of it the Trump Justice Department getting a subpoena to look at the email and phone records of the Trump White House Counsel. That's scary stuff.

KANNO-YOUNGS: No, it is. And around this time, my colleagues at the times as well did report that the President was making a push for Don McGahn as well to try to basically push out Bob Miller at that time, and the President was being very clear about his opposition to that investigation and the work of that office.

So it really does raise a question here, as we've been saying, we have the former top officials of the Justice Department all saying that they didn't know about this. So one half of the question is, was there any sort of political choice here and political motive?

But then the other is, how ingrained is this practice in the bureaucracy of the Justice Department? We know that issuing subpoenas and trying to track down leaks spans multiple administrations. So how normal is this when it comes to the practice of the Justice Department?

And when it comes to the new stories that we've seen come out recently was there any direction from that type of--

KING: Right. Garland is meeting with news executives today? Top news to explain the part that deals with the news media, but then you has the members of Congress and their staffs and family, including a minor one case. Now you have the White House Counsel, that the CEO of Microsoft wrote a piece in your newspaper, "The Washington Post" an op-ed, Brad Smith is the President of Microsoft, the secret gag orders must stop.

That was part of the issue here. People are only finding out about this now. Because not only did the Justice Department under the Trump Administration get the subpoenas, they told Apple, Microsoft, whatever technology company, you cannot talk about this. And so now that the gag orders have expired in the new administration, voila, it comes to light.

KIM: Right. I mean, and what - how many other gag orders were there? Who else was muzzled for being able to disclose these details to the public, which is why I don't think we're going to have received the end of the inquiries in Congress and other independent inquiries anytime soon.

There's clearly going to be in the Senate you know, we've talked about how difficult it's going to be to get any actual subpoenas. But Democrats I've talked to privately see this as another kind of pressure point to use against Republicans to kind of drive a wedge between what they bought - what Democrats say is the right thing to do and also their alliance to Trump?

Because if you look on that Senate Judiciary Committee, lots of Trump loyalists, Trump allies on that committee, but Democrats do want to make it tougher and they're going to be fighting this issue for the next several days.

KING: We'll continue to follow as we get more information. And the panel is going to stay with us. When we come back, COVID cases are down, but a nasty virus variant is spreading and raising the fears of a potential new spike come fall.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

KING: A giant return to work question is being tested out in the courts. Can your employer require a COVID vaccine? In a case involving a Houston hospital the first court ruling is yes. And let's take a look.

The judge was in Texas, Judge Lynn Hughes ruling "This is not coercion" in her view. It is a choice made to keep staff patients and their families safer. That's the first ruling in federal court the workers who oppose that mandate promise to appeal and there could well be other court tests elsewhere.

One of the nation's largest hospitals New York Presbyterian, informing staff Friday, they must be vaccinated by September. Let's look at the reasoning as they put it. They the same idea - they talked about patient safety. They also said this is not new look, this will be in addition to our existing vaccination requirements against the Flu, Measles, Rubella and Varicella all of which already required to keep our patients and fellow workers safe. So that is what they are laying out. What do you think about this?

What do you think about the idea of being mandated to get a vaccine before you can go back to work? Well, 56 percent of Americans think companies should have that right to mandate vaccines before you come back to work 44 percent though, that's a big number, say no; company should not be allowed to mandate us.

Let's bring into the conversation to share his expertise and insights Dr. Carlos del Rio, he's Executive Associate Dean of the Emory University School of Medicine. Doctor, this is a conversation that is happening in workplaces around the country.

In the cases of these hospitals, the court case in Texas, New York Presbyterian, they are saying try to carve out a special niche, if you will. This is health care. These are patients these are safety. We do this for other diseases as well. So make sense to you.

DR. CARLOS DEL RIO, EXECUTIVE ASSOCIATE DEAN OF EMORY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT GRADY HEALTH SYSTEM: Yes, John, it really does. We in health care have been mandating other vaccines, as you heard from New York Presbyterian, also admired health system and others. Influenza vaccine is mandated annually were mandated as health care workers to be vaccinated against Hepatitis B against Varicella.

So this is not unique. And I think it again; it's about patient's safety it is about staff safety, you know, health care workers are at increased risk of COVID. So in my mind, it makes sense. I think the issue that people are struggling with is whether you can mandate this when it's still under an emergency use authorization?

But we must remember that both Moderna now and Pfizer have applied for full authorization from the FDA what's called you know, approval from the FDA and the moment that happens, and then I see absolutely no problem and you can certainly mandate the vaccine.

KING: We'll watch that out through the weeks ahead as we expect that process to play out. I want to walk through to you where we are at this moment.

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