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CNN Live Event/Special

Top Trump Officials Resign After Mob Stormed Capitol; Congress Certifies Biden Win After Deadly Riot at U.S. Capitol; FBI Asks for Public's Help in Identifying Rioters at U.S. Capitol; Four Dead at Capitol Hill As Rioters Raid the Hill; Mulvaney Resigns from Trump Administration. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired January 07, 2021 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:01]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning. I'm Anderson Cooper.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Erin Burnett.

And the breaking news this hour, American democracy prevails and an insurrection fails. But now the question is, how can this nation survive and get through 13 more days of President Trump?

Congress has certified Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States but in the hours leading up to that vote we all saw the embarrassing violence and the shame, destruction and death marking a dark day in American history. Four people are dead after domestic terrorists fueled by President Trump and his lies about the election stormed and trashed the nation's Capitol as we all watched, Anderson.

COOPER: President Trump two months after losing the election finally issued a statement. He says the fight isn't over yet and claims there will be an orderly transition of power. The damage certainly is done and a string of top Trump officials said they are done with this administration as well, including former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. More resignations are likely. We're told the statement the president put out was issued at least partly to keep more people from quitting.

All this as some Trump Cabinet members at the urging of Republicans are now privately discussing evoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.

We're covering all the angles this morning. Let's begin with CNN's John Harwood at the White House.

So, John, the White House spokesman Dan Scavino put out a statement after Congress certified Joe Biden's win. Talk about what it says.

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dan Scavino, of course, Anderson, had to put out the statement because the president's Twitter account had been locked for what he had issued earlier in the day. What Dan Scavino conveyed in that statement was a president who had been browbeaten by aides saying finally that he would accept the peaceful transfer of power. But even while doing that it was better that he did it than that he

didn't for the country, he displayed the pathologies that have underlied his behavior for some time, that is the inability to recognize the difference between reality and fantasy, between truth and lies, and to act on those things. He says in the statement, I disagree with the outcome of the election and the facts bear me out.

There is no disagreement, he lost the election, and that there are no facts bearing out a contrary opinion. So he put out that statement in response to the horrific scenes that we saw yesterday that had embarrassed so many people and we're left to wake up today and see what will happen in the aftermath, so far it's been fairly calm in Washington.

COOPER: At least two White House staffers resigned yesterday, Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger and Stephanie Grisham, the first lady's chief of staff, who used to be also the spokesperson of the White House and was one of the top liars while she held that position. Do we expect to see more?

HARWOOD: Well, we saw this morning Mick Mulvaney who had been the White House chief of staff who now has a part-time job or had a part- time job as an envoy Northern Ireland. I think most of these are performative acts by the resigners trying to signal to people with 13 days left in the administration, I'm not that bad, I'm not that guy, I didn't encourage that seditious coup yesterday.

But you've got to wonder, Anderson, what the value of those resignations actually is in the sense that if you are somebody in the White House, in a position of influence, and you are appalled by what the president is doing, is it a greater service to the country to vacate and leave the president to do what he will do, or is it, in fact -- is the better thing for them to stay and try to prevent the president from doing more bad things?

Mick Mulvaney no longer has influence and so you have to say that his statement, and you could hear what he said to CNBC this morning, is mostly an attempt to cleanse his reputation.

COOPER: Yes. John Harwood, stay with us.

BURNETT: And let's bring in CNN's Lauren Fox on Capitol Hill.

You know, interesting hearing, you know, John Harwood analyze that, Laura. Several GOP senators who were planning to challenge Biden's win, you know, we saw this play out live last night, Kelly Loeffler among them, right, had a change of heart following what happened yesterday.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's exactly right. I mean, before they went back into the chamber, Senator Mike Braun, a Republican from Indiana who had signed on to that effort by Senator Cruz to vote for some of these objections, said he'd had a change of heart. Essentially that he thought it was time to move on. And when asked why he believed that was the right decision, he said because of what happened today, right? I mean, there were so many members, several of them that I want to

highlight including Loeffler who was planning on bringing her very own objection for the state of Georgia, and for a reminder for viewers back home, that would have taken another two hours of debate. There would have had to have been another vote. It would have been even a longer night into the morning.

So I think that one thing to remember was that there were several Republicans who decided, look, I've seen enough. It is time to remind voters what has happened here. Now, there were some Republicans who still went through with it, who still voted for objections. Senator Josh Hawley still brought forward his objection to the state of Pennsylvania and I'm going to read here the list of Republican senators who supported that objection.

[09:05:05]

It's Senator Josh Hawley, Senator Ted Cruz, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Rick Scott, Tommy Tuberville and Cindy Hyde-Smith. So that gives you a sense of those members sticking with the president, sticking with his supporters saying that there are concerns about what we all know was a fair and free election -- Erin.

BURNETT: So, Lauren, you know, obviously you're talking about the change of heart that some had, not all, some, but what are Republicans on Capitol Hill saying? You know, a lot of them who had not said anything for a very long time now are starting to talk. What are you hearing them say following this -- you know, the insurrection, the attempted coup that we saw by Trump followers yesterday?

FOX: Well, I think some of the most stirring speeches came from Republican senators last night. And I want you to take a listen to what Senator Mitt Romney and Senator Lindsey Graham had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth. Truth.

(APPLAUSE)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Trump and I, we've had a hell of a journey. I hate it being this way. Oh, my god, I hate it. All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Look at the damage that was wrought in this House today, to this country today. Is that not enough?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: And bipartisan condemnation there, Erin. And before he left last night we asked Senator majority whip John Thune whether it was time for the Republican Party to move on from Trump and he said, look, we need to start talking about a party that's about ideas, a party that's about principles, and not a party that is about one person. Essentially look where that has gotten Republicans -- Erin. BURNETT: Yes. All right. Lauren Fox, thank you very much. Anderson?

COOPER: Will the president be able to stay in office for these final two weeks or could he face some sort of impeachment or the possibility of being removed under the 25th Amendment?

Joining me now to discuss, Laura Coates, a CNN senior legal analyst, a former federal prosecutor, she's also the host of "The Laura Coates" show on the Sirius X Radio, and John Harwood is back with us as well.

So, Laura, let's talk about what the 25th Amendment is, how it might or could be invoked.

LAURA COATES, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Remember, the 25th Amendment was created because they had a response to the assassination of JFK where we were left thinking, wait, what's going to happen if somebody is incapacitated? Is there a formal way for us to transfer and delegate power if the president of the United States can no longer carry out his or eventually her duties?

And the answer was this way and the process to have either the vice president along with the majority of the Cabinet or the vice president in connection with a committee that was supposed to have been formed with Congress in order to decide whether the president of the United States had that capacity to still maintain effectiveness in office. Once that takes place, if there were to be a decision that was made that says this president can no longer carry out his duties, well then they have a formal way of saying you must leave office. Now Vice President Pence would have the power.

There are some contingencies, though, because with bureaucracies, as you know, Anderson, there's always red tape and the process is a bit convoluted. President Trump could then appeal through a letter and say actually I am still fit for office, at which point then Pence and team, Cabinet, could then respond and allow for Congress to ultimately decide. You've got a period of about three weeks that could be looming over all of that. So this could be a longer process, but not anywhere near as long as an impeachment could be.

COOPER: Yes, I mean, John, neither of those things frankly seem all that realistic. I mean, given the required buy-in from Vice President Pence and a majority of President Trump's Cabinet from the 25th Amendment.

HARWOOD: Anderson, I see no chance that either of those things will happen. Theoretically could they happen? Yes. The Congress can move very expeditiously if it wants to, but remember 52 out of 53 Republican senators voted to absolve the president of the extortion against Ukraine where the evidence was quite clear what the president had done.

I do think that the talk that we're hearing and I talked to a member of the Democratic leadership last night who said, yes, there's tremendous support for impeachment. We have seen this reporting about discussion of the 25th Amendment. I think the practical impact of that discussion is to signal people around the world and within the United States government that more and more people regard the president as not stable, not of sound mind and, therefore, make it easier for people to ignore orders that he might give or things that he might try to do.

I think as a practical matter we all remember -- at least those of us old enough to remember when Richard Nixon was on the verge of resignation, some of his Cabinet members sent signals saying that, you know, this man who had control of the nuclear codes, if you get an order, you clear it from me, the Defense secretary said at the time, rather than acting on something that you hear from the White House.

[09:10:10]

I think that message is being sent throughout the government with the hope that it would provide some constraint on anything the president might attempt to do over the last 13 days.

COOPER: Well, John, along those lines, I mean, it was interesting when we heard from the Pentagon yesterday talking about the National Guard and they kind of -- they gave a laundry list of the people who they had discussed this with, Vice President Pence being primary among them. The president was not mentioned in that list.

HARWOOD: Exactly. And you know, for an important moments of the presidency members of the administration have tried to in effect act as if the president didn't exist. I mean, we've gotten stories of, you know, Gary Cohn when he was the National Economic Council director, hiding a piece of paper related to trade sanctions that he didn't want the president to do. The Defense Secretary Jim Mattis tried to get people to ignore things the president wanted to do. So did John Kelly when he was the White House chief of staff.

So increasingly people are trying to say in effect this guy is not really the president and of course the president has all but resigned anyway from the performance of his actual duties.

COOPER: Yes.

HARWOOD: So people are trying to figure out ways to minimize the damage that he could do.

COOPER: Laura, there's got to be some sort of a reckoning just in terms of law enforcement and how they -- the failure of preparation. And I don't know if it's law enforcement's fault or the fault of political leaders overseeing the deployment of law enforcement, but whether it's the Capitol Police, the city of D.C. Department of Homeland Security whose, you know, Chad Wolf, the acting director, was apparently on some goodbye tour overseas in the Middle East.

It is remarkable when you look at the difference between the preparations made by law enforcement for Black Lives Matter protests this summer and what we saw yesterday.

COATES: It's not only remarkable, it's unconscionable. It's unconscionable that Twitter was able to do what apparently Congress feels reluctant to do. We have to be direct and not tip toe around what happened yesterday. On two counts. Number one, the president of the United States telling people to march down Pennsylvania Avenue and confront weak Republicans, and we saw the casualties that ensued, not only the figurative but also the literal ones.

But we also saw the unconscionable action when, I remember in June when the president called from the Rose Garden and threatened to possibly invoke the Insurrection Act because there were peaceful protesters in places like Lafayette Square, in places around the country protesting against an abuse of power. They were tear gassed and children among them, all so the president could ham handedly hold a bible in a church across the street without the permission of even the parishioners there.

And now you have the president of the United States who's not only been inciting insurrectionists but there were people who were able to walk by Capitol Police, they could have had guns, they could have harmed people, there were pipe bombs that were found in the area. People actually walked by police officers and they had no idea whether to stop them.

Remember a few years ago when a black woman drove her car near a barricade near the Capitol and with her child in the back seat, she was gunned down? I mean, this is what's unconscionable and wholly unjust about America. The duplicity and the double standard, and people watched that and I hope the new attorney general takes into consideration how the people feel when he prosecutes them.

COOPER: Yes. Laura Coates, well said, appreciate it. John Harwood as well. Thank you.

Still to come, how safe are our nation's leaders? Questions this morning about, well, as we've just been talking with Laura, the security response in the immediate moments surrounding this mob storm in the U.S. Capitol and frankly the preparations for what we knew was going to be a chaotic day. How things got so out of control. We'll talk about that next.

Also a day of chaos. Will Congress take action? Senator Ben Carden joins us.

Also more on the resignations of the Trump administration, those last- minute resignations, and how they could impact the president's final days. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman is here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

ERIN BURNETT, CO-ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: So, this morning, the FBI is asking for any help from the public to identify some of the rioters at the U.S. Capitol yesterday. Right now barriers are up around the building following the insurrection, the attempted coup by these Trump supporters. Four people died after the president told his supporters to march on the Capitol, to protest against democracy. One member of Congress says she was worried it would be a mass casualty incident. CNN anchor and chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto is on Capitol Hill. And Jim, I know you talked to all of these -- you know, all of the players here in law enforcement, but obviously when we saw what happened yesterday, it was disturbing at the least, right, to just see the lack of law enforcement. Even amidst all the preparations for this inauguration, and this has got to impact that now, right?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, let me tell you, I've spent the last 12 hours talking to national security officials, current, former, law enforcement officials. No one, not a single one has a good explanation for why this happened yesterday. Why they weren't prepared. I want to quote now from a national security official now advising the Biden transition, word-for-word. "It looks like a catastrophe. You know they're coming. You know their only potential target is this date, and you don't make plans to secure the capitol. What are you planning to do? If they got weapons into the building, we could have had dozens or hundreds of members of Congress killed. How could they not have anticipated this?"

[09:20:00]

And this is the fundamental question today. Because you know, you can say in situations like this, this was an intelligence failure, there was no intelligence because the rally took place down here with thousands of participants, they had circled this date on the calendar for weeks at the president's encouragement, the president encouraged them to walk to the capitol, they walked to the capitol on camera and then broke in. There was clearly insufficient preparation for this, insufficient manpower, not enough barriers. I've never seen anything like it, and forget my own experience of it, but the national security people I've spoken to with decades of experience have not seen anything like it. And they don't -- the current ones don't have a good explanation for it, and the people who are about to come in are genuinely alarmed about --

BURNETT: Yes --

SCIUTTO: What this means and why this happened.

BURNETT: I mean, so, Jim, you know, how are we going to get answers? You know, we all know the president didn't really want to call in the National Guard. We all -- you know, we all know some of what happened, but the reality of it is, this is Washington D.C., right? This is -- they're supposed to be prepared --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

BURNETT: For an attack at any moment, right? So, the fact that one --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

BURNETT: One, you know, hand wasn't talking to the other is an unacceptable explanation.

SCIUTTO: It is. And I will tell you the contrast between before and after. So, I was up on the Hill late night into the early morning hours, when I was driving back, I had to navigate snow plows blocking the streets with police presence -- and let me show you some of the security presidents here -- presence here this morning. So, we have -- these are D.C. National Guards men, they're actually members of the Air Force, they're here from Joint Base Andrews, some of the hundreds of National Guards men that have been mobilized all around the capitol this morning. You have, you know, a ring of them, uniformed, and you have police wherever you turn. That's fine. This is many hours after it happened.

Why wasn't there something similar yesterday when you knew they were there just down the mall with plans to come here publicly encouraged by the president? That national security official advising the Biden transition tells me that he expects there to be a soup to nuts investigation of this in the Biden administration. You would expect it to be because you have to plan for the next one, right? Because these groups are not going away, and that of course is the concern going forward what happens next time?

BURNETT: Right --

SCIUTTO: You know, will they be prepared? And Erin, just -- you know, I was on the Hill in 1998 when there was the Capitol Hill shooting, two capitol police officers lost their lives. You may remember --

BURNETT: Yes --

SCIUTTO: After that and after 9/11, there was an enormous re- jiggering of security on the Hill. They dug and built an entire visitors center as a security --

BURNETT: Right --

SCIUTTO: Precaution. All of that was breached yesterday. Why? And what's going to be done about it now?

BURNETT: It is -- it is incredible. And obviously, some of the videos we've seen about sort of them coming in with at the very least no resistance are very disturbing. OK --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

BURNETT: Jim Sciutto, thank you very much. So, many questions about that today. So next, Senator Ben Cardin, he was there when the Capitol came under deadly attack, when this breach happened and he's going to join us next to share his experience.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:25:00]

ANDERSON COOPER, CO-ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: Today, we're left with the aftermath of yesterday's deadly assault on democracy. Here are some brand-new images into CNN as cleanup is under way on Capitol Hill, literally and figuratively. The chaotic violent scenes left behind extensive damage that will have to be repaired ahead of the upcoming inauguration. We'll go to Brian Todd on Capitol Hill now for the physical cleanup. Just how much damage was caused, Brian, do we know? BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, considerable damage and

they're still assessing the damage this morning. We know that doors and windows were broken, we know that there was rampaging going on inside Statuary Hall and areas of the Capitol inside. We know that Speaker Pelosi's office was breached, that rioters left a note in there, and they took some things from her office. They're still assessing the damage inside. As far as the damage outside, here is what we can show you. Our photo journalist, Allen Smith(ph) is going to zoom in past my left shoulder there. You can see the boarded up doors and windows that were breached yesterday, over there just beyond that scaffolding.

And we were here at the base of this -- of the base of this area yesterday when protesters, rioters were -- they had -- they had climbed the scaffolding, they were waving flags, they were -- you know, then they went and breached those doors and windows there and got inside from that direction as well as other areas of the Capitol. So that's some of the cleanup that's going on now, and they've actually just pushed the perimeter back a little bit further this morning. Just a few minutes ago, we were across the street right by that wall, D.C. police officer just pushed us a little bit further past that perimeter. And so, they're extending the perimeter out a little bit this morning.

Those are National Guards men behind me from a Joint Base Andrews. I have to tell you, we walked this complex this morning and we saw, you know, secured personnel ringing the complex, but maybe not as much as I quite expected. I thought there would be, you know, an officer or a National Guards man every 5 feet. That's not the case. So the question is, if protesters, if rioters come back today, what preparations have they made for surging personnel into this area? I've called and e- mailed the Capitol Hill police and asked that question. They have not gotten back to us yet, Anderson. So, that's going to be a big question. You know, if protests pop up in pockets today, we don't have word that they will, but if they do --

COOPER: Yes --

TODD: What kind of preparations are in place? There's a lot of pressure on Capitol Hill police right now and on law enforcement throughout this city.

COOPER: Yes, there certainly needs to be, you know, a hard look at what happened yesterday from the law enforcement standpoint. Brian Todd, appreciate it. The president's former Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney just joined a growing list of Trump administration officials who have suddenly resigned over yesterday's mob scene and attack on Capitol Hill incited by the president. A handful of others are quitting effective immediately, more resignations may be on the way. Meanwhile, his cabinet, some are said to have been discussing invoking the 25th.