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The Source with Kaitlan Collins

Vance Defends ICE Detainment Of 5-Year-Old Boy In Minneapolis; Zelenskyy Warns Russia Of "Big Losses" If Putin Continues War; Jack Smith: President Trump "Willfully Broke The Law." Aired 9-10p ET

Aired January 22, 2026 - 21:00   ET

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

[21:00:00]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, ANDERSON COOPER 360: --you can listen to the full conversation, wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the entire episode right now at CNN.com/AllThereIs. That's our grief community page. CNN.com/AllThereIs.

That's it for us. The news continues. I'll see you tomorrow.

"THE SOURCE WITH KAITLAN COLLINS" starts now.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, CNN HOST, THE SOURCE WITH KAITLAN COLLINS: Tonight, anger has erupted in Minneapolis over a 5-year-old boy being detained by immigration officers, as he arrived home from preschool. What we know tonight.

I'm Kaitlan Collins. And this is THE SOURCE.

And good evening from Davos, Switzerland, where President Trump just capped off a whirlwind trip, and he is headed back to the White House, where he's expected to land this hour in Washington. And we're going to get to the major headlines on that front tonight.

But we're going to start this evening in Minnesota, because a single image there has captivated and divided the entire country today. This is 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos being taken by ICE agents in his family's driveway after getting home from preschool on Tuesday.

Now what exactly led up to this moment is in dispute tonight. Here's what the Department of Homeland Security is saying. That they were targeting the boy's father, who is from Ecuador. But when ICE agents approached them in the driveway, DHS says, The dad took off and, quote, "Fled on foot -- abandoning his child."

The father was eventually apprehended and both were taken into custody together, the father and the son.

The School District released a video of that moment, showing the chaotic scene that many people in Minneapolis say has become all-too- familiar since those 3,000 federal immigration agents have arrived in their city.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(HONKING)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where's your humanity? Where's your humanity? That's a kid. That is a child.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: It's a story that even the Vice President acknowledged today sounded terrible when he first heard it.

But while he was in Minneapolis, on the ground today, JD Vance argued that after learning more about what happened in the video that you saw, he says the child's detention was justified.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JD VANCE (R), U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: I see this story -- and I'm a father of a 5-year-old, actually, a 5-year-old little boy -- and I think to myself, Oh my god, this is terrible. How did we arrest a 5- year-old?

Well, I do a little bit more follow-up research, and what I find is that the 5-year-old was not arrested, that his dad was an illegal alien, and then they -- when they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran.

So, the story is that ICE detained a 5-year-old. Well, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a 5-year-old child freeze to death? Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Now, attorneys for the family are arguing tonight that they have an active case, an active asylum case, and therefore they are in the country legally. They also say the dad here has no criminal record.

And what we do know, also from School District officials, as we're still trying to learn more about this, is that Liam is one of four of their students who have been detained by ICE in the last few weeks.

The School Board Chair who witnessed Liam's detention today rejected how the Vice President justified what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARY GRANLUND, SCHOOL BOARD CHAIR, COLUMBIA HEIGHTS PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT: I heard, What are you doing? Don't take the child.

His mom -- like, there are people here that can take him. There was another adult who lived in the home that was there saying, I will take the child. I will take the child.

Somebody else was yelling -- they saw that I was there and said, School is here. They can take the child. You don't have to take them. And there were -- there were -- there was ample opportunity to be able to safely hand that child off to adults. And mom -- mom was there. She saw out the window, and dad was yelling, Please do not open the door. Don't open the door.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: We know Liam and his father are being held at an ICE facility in Texas, this evening.

And this comes, as the Justice Department also announced today that they have arrested the three people who interrupted a church service in Saint Paul on Sunday. They were there protesting a pastor who appears to be a top ICE official in the Twin Cities.

And the Department of Homeland Security shared the images of all the protesters who were arrested. And then the White House account, though, shared one that stood out. That's because it's a fake version of one of those photos. You can look at them side by side here.

[21:05:00]

The White House implicitly confirmed to CNN that it did, in fact, alter this photo and knowingly posted it. Because officials directed us, when we asked about the tweet, to another post from a spokesperson that says, Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

That side by side tonight, and also, as we are trying to learn more, is what leads us to our lead source tonight. The Democratic senator from Minnesota, Tina Smith, who has been very outspoken about all of this.

And so, Senator, it's great to have you back here, given obviously, what's been happening in your home state these last few weeks.

I want to start though, this 5-year-old who's been -- who's now in ICE custody with his father tonight. What if anything have you heard about what happened here?

SEN. TINA SMITH (D-MN): Well, I spoke with the attorney for this family, first thing this morning, and of course, what they've said is what the eyewitnesses there at the scene said, which is that there were adults there that were prepared to take this child.

It's also really important to understand that this father, the man, is not illegal. He is actively seeking asylum in this country. He is here legally. So, we have yet another example of somebody who is here in the United States, legally, being detained and being shipped off to Texas, this time with his 5-year-old child.

And I was so struck by what the Superintendent of the Columbia Heights School District, who has watched four of her students, just in the last weeks, children be detained, and she said, We have whistles and they have guns. And the heartbreaking message there that these aggressive and sometimes violent ICE agencies are just -- agents are just trampling over people's rights. And here we have this 5-year-old, now in detention, in Texas, for absolutely no reason.

COLLINS: And what the Department of Homeland Security is arguing is -- and this is part of their statement. We read part of it earlier in the introduction. But they said, Our officers made multiple attempts to get the mother who was inside the house to take custody of her child. They say, Officers even assured her they would not take her into custody. She refused to accept custody, and the father told officers he wanted the child to remain with him.

Do you trust the version of what happened that is coming from the Department of Homeland Security tonight?

SMITH: It's very hard to trust anything they say, when they are routinely breaking the law and going against people's fundamental constitutional protections.

And what I trust is the Police Chief of Minneapolis who talked about how trained law enforcement, when you have a situation, where you have a young child, in this kind of a very chaotic and scary environment, trained law enforcement know that their job is to de-escalate. It is to make sure that the child isn't traumatized. They are to figure out how to make sure that the child is in a safe place. And yet, these federal agents, do nothing like that. And, as a result, I mean, who knows what kind of disaster this is going to mean for this family.

And again, reinforcing, this person, this father, was in the United States, legally. There was no reason to detain him or to send him hundreds of miles away from his home at all.

COLLINS: What did you make of the Vice President's visit to your state today, and what he said in Minneapolis while he was on the ground?

SMITH: Well, I was fearful that what the Vice President was going to do was to sort of show up and have a press availability, and not actually try to get to work, to de-escalate this situation and to try to find a solution. And certainly, his rhetoric today was less hot than we have heard from other members of the administration at other times.

But the bottom line is that he continues to sort of spread this story that the administration is trying to push out there, that the streets of Minneapolis are unsafe, and federal law enforcement is here to address that. When that is entirely not the case.

In fact, what's making the streets of Minneapolis, and the streets in Willmar and other smaller towns around Minnesota, unsafe, are these ICE agents which are showing up and detaining, arresting United States' citizens and people who are here legally.

So, I wish that the Vice President and other members of the administration would actually get serious about talking about how to reduce the pressure in my state, by reducing the number of agents that are out there, creating all of this chaos. And that would be a step in the right direction, and something that people that I talked to today would be, like, so grateful to see happen.

COLLINS: Senator Tina Smith, as always, I'm grateful for you for joining. Thank you for being here.

And also, as we're looking into everything that happened here, we have two of our most in-demand political sources as well.

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David Axelrod, who was a Senior Adviser to President Obama, of course.

And Doug Heye, who was the communications director for the Republican National Committee.

And David Axelrod, can I just get your take, when we first look at this, and we're hearing about this -- when you see the images of the 5-year-old, I think that is something that is so visceral for people to look at. And even the Vice President was saying, when he first heard this, he was a little bit shocked by it. What do you make -- are you reassured by anything that the Department of Homeland Security has said?

DAVID AXELROD, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST, FORMER SENIOR ADVISER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: I'm not, Kaitlan, because of the track record.

You know, I'm informed by my experiences of Chicago, and I was around for Operation Midway Blitz in the fall in which they -- the same forces of disorder showed up, and we had the same kind of problems. The Vice President said we didn't. We did. In Chicago. And the court stepped in.

And I just want to read you one thing that I think is an answer to your question. In a 231-page decision, a ruling that a judge made there, she said that she couldn't trust DHS to tell the truth, and she said specifically about Bovino. Bovino appeared evasive over three days of his deposition, the guy who ran that operation and this one, either providing cute responses to plaintiff's counsel's questions or outright lying.

So, this has been a pattern. We saw it in Chicago. We're seeing it again here. Where, they represent facts on the ground that turn out not to be true. So no, I don't have confidence, and that's one of the problems.

One of the people -- one of the reasons you have people carrying cellphones around and videoing what's going on is because there isn't a trust that the true facts will be -- will be known. So, I think this is a problem that needs to be addressed.

COLLINS: I mean, Doug, when you look at this. Some people say, Well, the President vowed mass deportations on the campaign trail, he vowed to get tough on immigration. Do you think this is what they voted for?

DOUG HEYE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST, FORMER RNC COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: For some of them, yes. For a lot of them, no. And we're certainly starting to see that in the polling.

And if we go back to the first Trump administration, we started hearing the term, Family separation. Yes, it happened in the Obama administration as well, but we certainly saw it up close and personal in the Trump administration in the first one, in a way that we didn't before. Part of that is just access to footage that we have, as David referenced.

And listen, I try to never weigh in until I know exactly what's happened, which can be hard to do when you're not at a place, and one person's cellphone coverage may be incomplete and another person's 10- feet away may show a different picture. But clearly, images of children are always going to strike voters in a very real way, and I think that's part of what we're seeing right now.

And politically, for the President, and the administration, and Republicans who are running, including a new Republican candidate, Michele Tafoya in Minneapolis -- in Minnesota, this comes with two problems.

One, voters don't like what they're seeing, when they see these images and when they see this footage.

The other is that when we're talking about this, whether it's what JD Vance said today, or what we saw on Capitol Hill today? So often, this administration and Congress isn't addressing what voters are telling them very loudly they want solutions on, which is this situation with the economy and what things cost.

So, any time that is spent on issues that aren't that, whether it's Greenland, what's happening in Minnesota, or these other issues that come up as it's sort of a Trump outrage du jour? It takes Republicans off the topic that they should be on.

COLLINS: Yes, well, and David Axelrod, listening to the Vice President today on the ground in Minneapolis. Senator Tina Smith just noted, his rhetoric was different today, she thought, his tone, than it was when we heard from him two weeks ago, when he came out to the Briefing Room, following the shooting death by an ICE agent of Renee Good.

I want you to listen to what he said about immunity that federal officers enjoy, and have, two weeks ago. Versus what he said about that today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VANCE: The precedent here is very simple. You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action. That's a federal issue. That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job.

I didn't say, and I don't think any other official within the Trump administration said, that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity. That's absurd. What I did say is that when federal law enforcement officers violate the law, that is typically something that federal officials would look into. But of course, we're going to investigate these things. Of course we're investigating the Renee Good shooting.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AXELROD: Yes, I think--

COLLINS: Axe, what do you make of that answer?

AXELROD: I think that he's not consulting the law. He's consulting polls. And as Doug said. There was another one today in The Times. There is a huge gap.

[21:15:00]

The administration should claim credit for stopping the flow of immigrants illegally across the border. They have done a good job on that, and that's been -- and voters recognize that. But when you ask about this element, they are more and more disquieted by what they're seeing. And I think they understand that, they're beginning to understand that as well.

The thing is that the Vice President said, Well, this is most just some far-left agitators who were creating all these problems.

No, that's really not what's happening. They sort of said the same thing about Chicago. And you know what happened? The business community, the faith community, community civic leaders, local community leaders, all came together and said, Please leave, because you are disrupting our city.

They were told, we were told, Minneapolis has been told, We're coming to get the worst of the worst. As you can see in this -- in this case of this young boy and his father, he was not the worst of the worst. He was not a criminal. He was not a threat to the community. And yet, they come, and they do this, and they disrupt the community. So, I think people have begun to absorb that. It's making them uncomfortable.

And just as a matter of -- the President doesn't take or ask for nor do I offer him my political advice. But if you were offering political advice, you'd say, This is not good for you. You may think you're stirring your base by doing these things. But ultimately, you need more than your base here. And what you're doing is not playing well in broad swaths of the country.

COLLINS: David Axelrod. Doug Heye. It's great to have both of you here tonight. Thanks for joining me.

And up next. Remember what the President said to me, last night, here in Davos about President Putin? Well, I saw Ukrainian President Zelenskyy today here. He was as well in Davos at this summit. His response to me, just ahead.

And also, the extreme partisan divide, not surprising, as lawmakers were questioning the former Special Counsel Jack Smith today. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. BECCA BALINT (D-VT): Do you believe that President Trump's Department of Justice will find some way to indict you?

JACK SMITH, ATTORNEY AND FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL FOR THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: I believe they will do everything in their power to do that, because they've been ordered to by the President.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: And that potentially historic winter storm that is set to hit much of the United States. It's snow. It's sleet. It's ice. It's rain. It could shut down cities over a 1,500-mile path. And we have the latest forecast.

[21:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: Today, President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, were in Davos and then flew to Moscow to meet with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.

It's a high-stakes meeting that comes just hours after the President himself sat down with Ukraine's President Zelenskyy, here in Davos, and the President afterward described it this way.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Look, we have a ways to go. They're meeting with President Putin today, as you know. The meeting was good with President Zelenskyy. We'll see how it turns out. A lot of people being killed.

REPORTER: Mr. President, what's going to be the message to President Putin? What do you want President Putin to know?

TRUMP: The war has to end.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Now President Zelenskyy came down those same stairs, a few hours later, and we asked him about how the meeting with the President went, and also what he believes how Putin is taking this message from the U.S. leader, this message, calling for the war to end.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Thank you so much, President Zelenskyy, for taking our questions.

PRES. VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINE: Thank you.

COLLINS: You met with President Trump behind closed doors earlier. First, how did that meeting go? And secondly, he said today that everybody wants this war to end. Do you think that includes Vladimir Putin?

ZELENSKYY: No, I'm not sure that Putin wants to finish this war in such situation where he is and where his army, with losses and without goals he wanted to have at the very beginning of this war. He really doesn't want. But their economy is really tired, and their army is very tired.

But also, our army is also tired. So, we are -- but we are honest, and we speak about it. We do our best what we can with our soldiers, and they do their best. But 35,000, as I said today, 35,000 dead Russian soldiers per month. And the number will increasing, and this is, I mean, big losses. It's up to them to continue the war or not.

But we want to stop this war. And that's why I think President Trump can, he really can, because he has dialog with Putin. Not everybody has dialog, just even dialog -- he has dialog with Putin on the same levels. I think America is much stronger than Russia, and you can see the result of this war. That's why I think that American army is stronger than Russian army, because of our experience with the war, with defending ourselves. And that's why I think he can do this.

Maybe they want to find compromises, you know, that we are open for different steps. And I said that it's two-sides compromise, two sides. So, Russians will not win this war. They didn't win. They will not.

[21:25:00]

COLLINS: The President has been talking about the Board of Peace. You've said that Putin is a terrorist and a war criminal. Does he belong on something called a Board of Peace, in your view?

ZELENSKYY: Look, this is the initiative of President Trump. It's not my initiative. I'm not the President of the United States.

COLLINS: He invited you to join.

ZELENSKYY: Yes, we've been invited. Be honest with you. So when we in the -- in the 20-points plan, yes, the read -- when we spoke about security guarantees and how to monitor one of the important first steps, like ceasefire.

And the American side proposed that they will need partners who will monitor with the United States, and it can be like council office, and it will be two sides of the war. It mean Russians, Ukrainians, because we are on the contact line, we have to monitor, yes, by drones and technologies. And they said, it will -- the Americans and some other Europeans, yes.

But we -- so, I mean, it's not the news about this council for me. I didn't know how it will be, that it will be in Davos, and whom President Trump will involve or propose invitation. I didn't know. It's up to him.

But I said that for us, it's understandable that we will be in this board when the war will end. Now with Russians we are enemies. Belarusians are allies of Russians. We can't be with them. And it's already in the package, in the 20-points plan. So, it will work, I think so, it will work with monitor mission after, only after the war will end.

COLLINS: Mr. President--

ZELENSKYY: Maybe there are some other like Gaza and they said -- some other issues. I'm not talking about us to be involved to Gaza and other questions. So, we are speaking about these partners who will monitor ceasefire and security guarantees.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: And my source tonight is Susan Rice, who served as a policy advisor to President Biden, as well as the National Security Adviser and United Nations Ambassador for President Obama.

So, it's great to have you here, Ambassador.

And you heard what President Zelenskyy said there.

Given this new round of talks, and we've seen so many of them throughout this war, is there any kind of new pressure that you believe the United States can use in this new round, to try to break this stalemate that's been playing out?

SUSAN RICE, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: Well, there's plenty of pressure we could apply. The question is whether we will apply it. And thus far, Trump has not been willing to do so.

There's obviously sanctions pressure. There's been a bill waiting in Congress for many, many months, that the President has not given the greenlight to, which would put some additional economic pressure on Russia. There's obviously also Ukraine's very deep need for financial resources and for military equipment of various sorts that they've been requesting, and haven't been granted by the United States.

So, there are levers we could pull. I think the question is, is there something that is not evident to outside observers, that would give one some greater hope that this time, negotiations might turn out differently.

Putin has been relentlessly attacking Ukraine, knocking out its power, making lives miserable, and killing scores on a daily basis. And so, he's exhibiting, at least overtly, no interest in ending the war.

We'll see what Witkoff and Kushner bring to Moscow. We'll see what comes out of that, and then in the subsequent trilateral meetings, if they happen.

But the United States needs to stand four-square with our European partners and Ukraine, to make clear that Putin has to make a faithful choice. He either pays a high price by deciding to continue the war, or he signs on to peace. And I confess, I'm not yet, in any way, shape or form, optimistic.

COLLINS: Well given that, one thing that he has been invited to sign on to, the President says he has signed on to it, though I don't think the Kremlin has confirmed that yet, is the Board of Peace.

And we've seen the countries who have already signed on. So far, the only western European nation is Hungary, obviously a close ally of Russia's. And when you look at that stage that was here in Davos today, that the President was sharing with, and the White House says, you know, those invitations just went out on Friday. They say, more people will join, they believe, in the coming weeks and months.

But as the former United Nations Ambassador, I wonder what you make of who was on that stage today, and the President's suggestion that this Board of Peace could replace the United Nations?

RICE: It's not going to replace the United Nations, because it is not representative of the world at large.

[21:30:00]

First of all, the composition of that board is really a parade of authoritarian strongmen and dubious democrats who may have been elected once or twice, like Orban, and have governed as autocrats. There really are no serious democratic partners yet to have joined that board, with the arguable exception of Israel, and their circumstances are rather unique in this regard, and they curiously, were absent at the convening today.

The problem with this Board of Peace is it's not a Board of Peace that -- in which the represented countries have a full voice and a vote. It's Donald Trump's attempt to play king of the world. He is the sole convener. He's the sole decider of who participates. He's the sole decider of how much people have to pay, to God knows whom, to be able to be permanent members of this thing.

And above all, he's the only one with a veto. And it's not the United States that has a veto. It's Donald J. Trump, who has a veto, who will keep himself in this role in perpetuity, if he chooses, or until he passes and -- or he decides to hand it off to one of his sons, or sons-in-law, or somebody else of his choice.

It's not a serious endeavor. And the reason why you don't see serious countries signing up to be part of this is because they wouldn't -- they're not prepared to subordinate their voice and their vote to Donald Trump.

COLLINS: He's the Chairman. And my colleague, Sam Waldenberg, asked him, as they were flying back tonight, could he see himself staying on as Chairman after he leaves office, after this second term is up? And he said, basically, potentially.

I mean, what would that look like for the next U.S. president, if he's still Chair of this Board of Peace?

RICE: Well, first of all, what is this Board of Peace actually going to do? Let's actually see it try to do something. I think, it will disintegrate when Donald Trump is no longer President of the United States. And I'm actually very dubious that, in the meantime, between now and then that -- that it will be able to do anything of any significance.

I think some of the subsidiary bodies that have been constructed to deal with the Gaza circumstance may have some, you know, a real agenda and a potential to play a role. But beyond Gaza and beyond, frankly -- it was only Gaza for which the Security Council gave this Board of Peace a mandate. It's hard to see how it does anything.

Is the United States' Chairman and leader of this Board of Peace going to deploy peacekeepers to Congo, or Darfur, or any of the number of places where the United States -- United Nations is putting blood and sweat on the line? I doubt it. So, I don't really know what this thing is going to do except stoke Donald Trump's ego.

COLLINS: Ambassador Susan Rice, thank you for joining us tonight.

RICE: Good to be with you, Kaitlan.

COLLINS: And up next. For the first time, we heard from Jack Smith testifying, publicly, about his past prosecutions of President Trump, the attempts to prosecute him.

And also, the President tonight, responding to Jack Smith, what he said this evening.

[21:35:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: The former Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the investigations into the current President of the United States, testified publicly today for the first time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SMITH: President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the law, the very laws he took an oath to uphold.

Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Speaking in that public forum, at times, Jack Smith seemed to be making the case that he never really had the chance to make in court.

And even though President Trump was here, overseas, Jack Smith certainly had his attention. Because, as he was flying back to Washington, the President posted, quote, "Based on his testimony today, there is no question that Deranged Jack Smith should be prosecuted for his actions. He destroyed the lives of many innocent people, which has been his history as a prosecutor. At a minimum, he committed large scale perjury." Now the President there is publicly calling for his Department of Justice to prosecute Smith, to go after him.

As House Republicans, also today, as they were questioning him, accused Smith of doing exactly that, investigating people for political purposes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): It was always about politics. And to get President Trump, they were willing to do just about anything.

We got to get Trump. We got to get the President.

REP. BOB ONDER (R-MO): You were trying to get President tried -- tried, convicted and hopefully in prison before Election Day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Now Jack Smith made clear, as he testified that he believes the threat of prosecution loomed over today's hearing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BALINT: Do you believe that President Trump's Department of Justice will find some way to indict you?

SMITH: I believe they will do everything in their power to do that, because they've been ordered to by the President.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[21:40:00]

COLLINS: My legal source worked with Jack Smith during their time at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. Karen Friedman Agnifilo is here. I should note, she currently represents Luigi Mangione in his case.

And Karen, just as you look at this case though, this testimony today with Jack Smith, he did want to testify publicly, just so everyone knows. I wonder what you make of the legal risk that he is facing, given the Justice Department, what the President said, and obviously how he was being questioned and how he answered today.

KAREN FRIEDMAN AGNIFILO, FORMER CHIEF ASSISTANT MANHATTAN D.A., PREVIOUSLY WORKED WITH JACK SMITH: I don't think Jack Smith has anything to hide. He brought this case. He will talk about it publicly. That's what he asked for. If he was going to be subpoenaed, he wanted to be able to say it publicly, so that his words spoke for themselves, and they couldn't be mischaracterized. And he has nothing to hide. He's proud of his work. And he knows that he is a target. The administration has made it very clear that he's a target.

But I don't think he's worried about anything, because he knows he didn't do anything wrong. That's the impression he gave today during the testimony.

COLLINS: You say he doesn't have anything to hide. But obviously -- I mean, the President is accusing him of perjury. You saw Republicans today, as they were making the argument, saying that he was targeting Trump for political purposes. But, I mean, that the President is now calling on his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, directly in a Truth Social post.

I mean, do you expect that something could happen here?

FRIEDMAN AGNIFILO: I think it's possible that they will try to find something. I mean, up until this Justice Department, you look at an event, you look at a crime, and like January 6, that we all saw with our own eyes, we all saw what happened that day. And Jack Smith investigated it.

And he investigated, he followed the facts wherever they lead, without fear or favor. Those were words that he used. That's how we were all trained as prosecutors to do that, and you don't have an outcome in mind. And he said that once he did that, once he followed those breadcrumbs, it led to one place. It led to Donald Trump.

And it's very different than today's Justice Department, where they target an individual and then they look for whatever they can find to try and pin it on them. We'll see if there's anything that they'll be able to find that Jack Smith could have done.

I think it's going to be very difficult. He is a very straight shooter. He always has been. He's always been somebody who does the right thing. He's never been political. I couldn't tell you, even though we worked together years ago, I couldn't tell you what his political leanings are, left or right. He's just a very kind of by- the-book guy who tries to do the right thing.

So, if they -- we'll see what they try to find out. But I don't think he's worried, because I think he knows he didn't do anything wrong. And today's testimony, he did the best he could to try and answer the questions. If he didn't remember something, he said he didn't remember it. And so, I'm not exactly sure what they would be able to bring against him.

COLLINS: Karen Friedman Agnifilo, thank you for your legal analysis of all of this tonight.

And I should note, as you were hearing Republicans today, questioning Jack Smith, over how this investigation was handled. Democrats, for the most part, chose to focus on what that investigation found.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-WA): Did your investigation find that Donald Trump attempted to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he lost?

SMITH: Yes.

JAYAPAL: Did he pressure state officials to ignore true vote counts in those states?

SMITH: Yes.

JAYAPAL: Did he spread lies and conspiracies to his followers to make them believe that the election had been illegally rigged against him?

SMITH: Yes.

JAYAPAL: Did he pressure DOJ officials to stop the certification of the election?

SMITH: He did.

JAYAPAL: Did he pressure his own vice president, Mike Pence, to stop the certification, against the oath of office that he had sworn to the Constitution?

SMITH: He did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: And that was the Democratic Representative of Washington there, questioning him, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal. And she is my next source.

And thank you for being here.

I assume you probably knew all the answers to those questions that you were asking in that moment there. Why did you feel the need to have him answer those questions, in that setting today?

JAYAPAL: Well, Kaitlan, the whole point of having him testify was to be able to tell the American people what was in his report, what he concluded from his extensive investigation. And he was never given the chance to do that, until today.

And so, I felt it was really important to lay out the central case, which is that Jack Smith found, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Donald Trump committed the criminal act of trying to steal and overturn an election.

[21:45:00]

And so, I wanted to take him through all of the things that led up to that, because it wasn't just what happened on January 6. It was all of the things that happened before January 6, and then also on January 6 itself.

COLLINS: He was questioned a lot by Republicans, about going after the phone records of some lawmakers who were on the phone, with President Trump, on January 6. Today, it was probably one of the biggest points of questioning that the GOP had.

Did you find his answers satisfying in that sense, in terms of being a lawmaker yourself, and how they felt about that? JAYAPAL: I did, especially later on in the hearing, when he actually said that this was the -- the toll records that he got were for a very limited amount of time, and it was not for content. It was for proof of the communication between the President and certain members of Congress.

And so, I think that clarification was very important, because Republicans kept making it seem like he was spying on members of Congress, and that wasn't the case at all. He didn't get any content. He just got the toll records. And that just tells you who a call was made to and when. So, he already had a lot of evidence that he would -- he had compiled. The toll records were really just back up for the case that he was getting ready to present in the court.

COLLINS: Do you think Kevin McCarthy should have -- who was one of those lawmakers, that he should have been able to know that his toll records had been subpoenaed by Jack Smith?

JAYAPAL: No. I mean, this point was made during the hearing too. The Republicans tried to make a big deal out of this, and say, Oh, he didn't even disclose that it was members of Congress. He didn't tell the members of Congress.

Well, that's not what you do. And he's -- I think Jack Smith started to say this, or said it during the hearing that, yes, you don't just go out and tell people what you're going to do when you're getting those records. You actually want to make sure you can get the evidence and see what it says. So, I don't think that one held up either.

And overall, Kaitlan, I think Republicans never attacked Jack Smith's facts of the case. They never tried to defend the President, in saying that he didn't steal the election. I mean, I found it really interesting that they went to sort of small, tactical things around the edges, but they didn't really take on the central facts of the case, or the central findings of the case at all.

And that just shows me what a weak hand they have, and what a strong hand Jack Smith had, because he kept going over and over again to the evidence and the facts that he had accumulated, that gave him the confidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Donald Trump had actually committed these crimes.

COLLINS: Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, thank you for taking the time to join us tonight. Really appreciate it.

Up next for us here on the ground, as we are watching what is coming in the United States, it is a potentially historic storm that is going to have destructive ice and heavy snow. We're tracking the latest movements and what's going to get hit the hardest. We'll tell you that forecast, next.

[21:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: One of the most extreme winter storms in years is set to blast more than half the country this weekend. That's because starting tomorrow, what is going to be a long-lasting storm, we believe, is going to bring damaging amounts of snow and ice all the way from Texas up to New England.

Our meteorologist, Chris Warren, is at the CNN Weather Center with the latest.

And Chris, I think there's a lot of questions about what people and where should expect coming into this weekend.

CHRIS WARREN, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, it is, Kaitlan, going to be a widespread high-impact weather event. And as you mentioned, something we have not seen for many areas in years.

The pink on the map showing winter storm warnings, which I would expect, will expand. So where we're having the higher confidence of seeing the high-impact weather, I expect that to expand all the way up into the northeast, so stretching here for more than 2,000 miles. And then there's the cold from the Canadian border to the Mexican border, dangerously cold conditions.

And keep in mind, because of this pink here, the ice that's going to happen, with the dangerously cold temperatures outside, you might not have power on the inside. Because this ice, as it's coming down, that rain freezing on contact to sidewalk, streets, power lines, trees, could lead to power outages that could last for days.

And then there's the snow. Notice, this is now Sunday, at 11 o'clock. So in Texas tomorrow, and we're going to really see things ramp up, and this system is going to continue. You can just imagine the kind of travel delays we're going to deal with, not just on the roads, but trying to go through the air as well. Not until afternoon into the evening hours, and even after midnight in New England, is be until this low (ph) finally gets out of here.

So, when it's all said and done, this snow footprint is going to be impressive. About 1,500 miles. Could see about a foot of snow on the ground. So that would be the extreme end. But you can just kind of see how many states and how far-reaching this is going to be. And then again, Kaitlan, with that snow to the south, there's going to be ice. So it's snow to the north, south, the ice, your best-case scenario is going to be the snow, because you don't want to be in the ice with these power outages.

COLLINS: No. I'm from the south. They do not like that.

And I got to ask you. We're hearing about exploding trees and the potential for that. I mean, can you tell us quickly, what could happen there?

[21:55:00]

WARREN: Well, essentially, it's just so darn cold, right? So, wind chills, 40 to 50 degrees below zero. And with that kind of cold, cold enough, Kaitlan, that the sap in trees can freeze and kind of like water it can expand. And just the short answer there, you can get a big crack vertically down the column of the tree, and the sound would be like an explosion.

COLLINS: OK. We'll see if that happens.

Chris Warren, thanks for keeping us updated.

Up next here, I should note, there is construction already underway. It appears a federal judge is doubtful about whether the President's White House demolition is legal. I think the horse might be out of the barn. We'll explain what's going on, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: Tonight, a federal judge appears ready to side with a top historic preservation group that is bent on stopping the President's White House ballroom project.

[22:00:00]

That's because at a hearing today, a U.S. District Judge appeared deeply skeptical that the President has the legal authority to build this massive new ballroom without sign off from Congress. Trump, the judge said, has a, quote, "Majority in the House and Senate" and he could've very easily gotten congressional approval for this.

The judge, however, did not rule from the bench, and he is expected to issue a decision in the coming weeks. That means, for now, that construction, that is very much still underway right now, will go on.

Thanks for joining us, live from Davos. I'll see you in New York, tomorrow night.

"CNN NEWSNIGHT WITH ABBY PHILLIP" starts now.