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Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Is Interviewed About Vance Slamming European Allies At Munich Security Conference; Russia Says It Has Detained Another U.S. Citizen; Little Transparency In Trump & Musk Plans To Upend Govt. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired February 14, 2025 - 11:00   ET

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

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[11:00:47]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, J.D. Vance is expected to meet with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, but not before the vice president scolded international allies at the Munich Security Conference, comparing today's European leaders to Cold War tyrants.

Plus, thousands more federal workers out of a job as Elon Musk and his team keep cutting, I'll ask to talk show radio hosts about what their local listeners are calling in about as we wrap week four of President Trump's second term.

And later, fly, Eagles, fly. The city of Brotherly Love is taking the afternoon off to celebrate the Super Bowl champs. We'll take you live to Philadelphia.

Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us on this Friday. I'm Pamela Brown in Washington. And you're in the CNN Newsroom.

Vice President J.D. Vance bursts onto the international stage and slams Europe over immigration and free speech, claiming officials are ignoring the will of the voters. He spoke at the Munich Security Conference amid negotiations to end the conflict in Ukraine. CNN chief international security correspondent Nick Paton Walsh joins us now. So Nick, Vance is set to meet with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy this hour. We will get to that in just a moment. But first, tell us more about the Vice President's speech and the reaction to it so far.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Yes, look, this was a very odd moment, frankly, in which I think many had known J.D. Vance was going to take the stage and try and launch the Trump administration's kind of culture wars and ideological societal beliefs at a European audience. But he essentially ended up giving a speech that it seemed to be the kind of language you would use to criticize Russia. But instead he was saying that indeed, America's European allies, Western European countries, at times, frankly, the heartbeat still of democracy, were the ones jailing their opponents, stifling free speech and even casting doubts on electoral process in that entire area, saying that Europeans governments are afraid of their own voters, citing annulled election recently in Romania, where Russian interference had been found by courts to have altered the vote and ordered a rerun.

Now, what was startling in all of this was to -- to hear the suggestion that certain laws in the United Kingdom have arrested people for peaceful prayer protests near abortion clinics. That's a warping of the laws in question that have kept political activity away from abortion clinics. Abortion much less of a hot bar issue in the U.K. and this just a bid to try and allow women to exercise their choice in safety. Speaking to a European audience who frankly must be wanting really to know what is the Trump administration's peace plan for Ukraine. But instead hearing this clearly prepared diatribe against democratic behavior in Europe, saying that people need to essentially accept that if the U.S. has survived a decade of Greta Thunberg, then they'll be OK.

And if democracy is so fragile it can't take $100,000 worth of investments in social media to warp elections, then it's in trouble anyway. A bizarre series of claims, a lot of them totally lacking in fact. The one person you think he might criticize more, Vladimir Putin, out of this speech, but all the things you expect his predecessors to have criticized Moscow for now, something he's accusing their European allies of doing, utterly bizarre.

BROWN: Nick Paton Walsh, thank you so much.

Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Gerry Connolly of Virginia. He serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee and is attending the Munich Security Conference. Congressman, thanks for taking the time. First off, I'm just wondering if you're hearing -- hearing any reaction from foreign leaders about the speech we just heard from the Vice President.

REP. GERRY CONNOLLY (D-VA), FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE: Well, the Europeans are nothing if not polite and diplomatic. But privately, I think Vice President Vance didn't burst on the scene. He stumbled onto the scene. It was an embarrassing presentation, maybe one of the most embarrassing moments I can remember at the Munich Security Conference from an American official. He showed condescension and ignorance at the same time. He hasn't got a clue about the democratic process and the political process here in Europe. I think it was a major misstep by the Trump administration in week four.

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BROWN: So who do you think the vice president's targeted audience was for that speech and what was the goal?

CONNOLLY: I think it's the Steve Bannons and the right wing friends that seems enamored with right wing political movements here in Europe and in the United States. Imagine lecturing Europeans about being afraid of their own electorate when it is Trump and Elon Musk who are firing FBI agents because they dared to do their duty, who are having loyalty tests at the National Security Council, who are firing tens of thousands of -- of federal employees because they consider them part of the deep state and can't be trusted. You're going to lecture others about political tolerance of free speech, that's a bit much. BROWN: Just -- just for context, given all of your experience, how unusual is it for a vice president of the United States to stand in front of European leaders and essentially dress them down for their domestic policies?

CONNOLLY: I think it's highly unusual and I think it's also undesirable. It was completely uncalled for. It was based on enormous buckets of ignorance by the Vice President, who, after all, has two whole years of legislative experience before becoming vice president. And I -- I don't think it's going to go down well at all. And I think it -- it's redolent of hypocrisy and paternalism of the worst sort. And I don't think the Europeans are going to take kindly to it, nor should they.

BROWN: Vice President Vance is also warning that the U.S. could hit Russia with economic and military tools of leverage, as he calls it, if Russian leader Vladimir Putin doesn't negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine in good faith. As we know he -- he's getting ready to meet with Zelenskyy right now. What do you think about those comments and what do you hope comes out of this meeting?

CONNOLLY: That was maybe the only bright spot in an otherwise desultory presentation by the Vice President that Russia will pay a price if it doesn't seek to engage in negotiations to try to end the war, the bloody war in Ukraine. We're going to be meeting with President Zelenskyy later tonight, the U.S. delegation. My understanding is he is meeting right now with the Vice President. My hope is those talks will lead to some fruitful engagement with the Ukrainians and more U.S. support publicly so that the Ukrainians know that we still have their back.

BROWN: I want to turn to domestic affairs here and ask you about Elon Musk. You have been pushing for the House Oversight Committee in which you serve as ranking member, to subpoena Musk to get more transparency about his role in access. That appears to be a losing battle so far. What's next for Democrats? What will you do to try to hold Elon Musk and his staffers accountable for the work that they're doing in the name of DOGE?

CONNOLLY: Well, that's kind of the ubiquitous question in the media. What can we do? Well, I mean, you know, there's the bully pulpit and we're using that, I believe legislatively, sooner or later Elon Musk will have to come to Congress. I think we will succeed in that effort. And then there's litigation in the courts. A lot of what Trump and Elon Musk are doing is unlawful and violates contracts, violates the Constitution, violates statutes that have been in the books for years. And it takes a lot to wind its way through the court system.

But we're pretty confident that we're going to get a series of positive rulings by courts that they've gone way too far and they're going to have to pull back or rescind gun lawful orders that affect not only federal employees, but more importantly, maybe they affect every American voter who benefits from a government service.

BROWN: Congressman Gerry Connolly, thank you so much. We have some breaking news just coming in to CNN. And Russia says it detained an American and Russia. I want to bring in CNN's Nick Paton Walsh for more on this. Nick?

WALSH: Yes. Breaking news here from the Russian Customs Service who according to state media is saying a 28-year-old U.S. citizen was arrested at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow for possession of a cannabis- laced marmalade. This is on February 7th. This arrest occurred of a 28-year-old American who had these cannabis found in his luggage. It seems that it was some sort of medicinal marmalade style candies which a sniffer dog found in a ziploc bag in his luggage.

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Now the same service goes on to suggest that a criminal case has been open, that potentially the penalties are five to 10 years in prison or just over $10,000 fine. I should point out the timing of this. This was literally in the days ahead of Marc Fogel, another American who the State Department classified as being wrongfully detained while he was on the edge of being released to Steven Witkoff, a Trump -- a Trump adviser and U.S. billionaire who turned up in Moscow in one of his own jets to take Fogel home.

Fogel also too was detained for possession of a sort of cannabis-style medic -- medicament that he said he had for spinal pain. Unclear quite what this U.S. citizen, much younger, Fogel was 61, what this 28-year- old had the medication for. This says this report that it was indeed medicinal in its intentions. Clearly an issue here of Americans bringing into Russia what they think they're allowed to because they've been prescribed it potentially in the United States.

But the timing of this is key because the court proceedings that led, it seems, to detention were coming to a fore on the Monday ahead of the Tuesday release of Fogel. So a clear insight here as to how Americans are still being detained, it seems, on similar reasons as to Fogel's detention just as that process of release was occurring. So more details, I'm sure will emerge around this. But clearly to potentially down the line, another instance in which another American citizen is held by Russia and could potentially be subject to negotiations further down the line to secure their release. Very early stages though, in this legal proceedings and this arrest just coming to light.

BROWN: We were just looking at a picture of Marc Fogel who as you pointed out, was just released. The timing of this cannot be ignored. Thank you so much, Nick Paton Walsh. For you on this, so Russia arrests one American, basically, it seems like in exchange for the release of another. I mean, that's what this appears like. And it also is against the broader backdrop of negotiations going on to in the war in Ukraine. What do you make of this?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, Pamela, what they're doing is the Russians are playing hardball at this point. They're -- they're giving a carrot in the sense of releasing Marc Fogel. Now they're doing a stick approach where they're pulling in somebody else and there potentially are other people that may be in detention as well at this point. So the idea here that the Russians have is we'll give you a little bit here, make you feel -- the U.S. feel like we're in essence winning on the diplomatic front and then they'll pull things back. So this relief to me, this portends that the negotiations surrounding Ukraine are going to be incredibly difficult.

They are not going to be easy to conduct just because of the all the different things that, you know, naturally are going to be part of a negotiation of that type between countries like Ukraine, Russia, the European Union and the United States. Now that you have a U -- another U.S. Citizen who has been detained by the Russian Customs Service, that then brings out all the other factors and they're going to use this as leverage against us.

That is the goal of the Russians are going to make this extremely hard. And I think it's going to take a while to not only get that person released, but also that's very unfortunate, but also it's going to take a while to achieve any other goals, any other foreign policy goals that the U.S. administration may have with Russia.

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BROWN: All right, Colonel Cedric Leighton, Nick Paton Walsh, thank you so much. We'll be right back.

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BROWN: Breaking news, we are just learning that the CDC is going to lose 1/10 of its workforce and Trump administration job cuts. That's nearly 1,300 probationary employees. Some of the other casualties in American agencies, 3,400 Forest Service employees, 2,000 from the Energy Department and 1,000 from the V.A. At the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, dozens of staffers were let go last night and dozens more were fired at the Office of Personnel Management.

Well, Elon Musk and President Trump say that their Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has found an abundance of waste and particularly fraud. They really emphasized that. But questions are growing about whether DOGE is tackling a real problem with fraud or just targeting federal programs that the Trump administration doesn't like. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about this earlier this week.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are all those things you just mentioned fraud or are they waste or are they just contrary to the President's policies?

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I would argue that all of these things are fraudulent, they are wasteful and they are an abuse of the American taxpayers' dollar. This is not what the government should be spending money on. It's -- it's contrary to the President's priorities and agenda. And again, we can continue to provide you the receipts for all of the fraud, waste and abuse.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BROWN: Jessica Tillipman from George Washington Law School joins us now. I guess I should call you Professor Tillipman. You were to me when I was at GW. I want to talk about this. And -- and first start by plain sound from the beginning of Trump and Musk's Oval Office presser Tuesday night.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And some of the things that we found which are shocking, billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse. And I think it's very important and that's one of the reasons I got elected. I say we're going to do that. Nobody had any idea it was that bad, that sick and that corrupt.

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BROWN: And this sort of language is often repeated by Elon Musk on his platform. You can see a few of the posts here. We can put them up. These are just from the last few days. Hopefully we have those right here. So just to start off this conversation, what is the legal definition of fraud and why does it matter that Musk and Trump may be mischaracterizing what DOGE is finding?

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JESSICA TILLIPMAN, ASSOC. DEAN & LECTURER, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIV. LAW SCHOOL: So it depends on the statute, and there's a lot to unpack here. The United States has a variety of different statutes that it can use to go after actual fraud or even actual corruption. These are crimes. So many times these require some specific intent to defraud. And again, the United States has a long history of prosecuting, successfully prosecuting actual fraud and actual corruption.

It also has statutes to recover significant civil penalties and damages from things that are fraudulent, like or improper payments. Some of these statutes, including the Civil False Claims Act, go back to the Civil War when there was fraud in the Union Army. So there have been centuries of basically prosecuting and recovering damages, sometimes even in the billions of dollars every single year, from these types of instances.

So when we're talking about fraud and corruption, we're talking about a very narrow category of things compared to what's been identified so far.

BROWN: And what has been identified so far. I know you've been looking through what DOGE has been put -- has been putting out. Have you seen fraud so far? What -- what -- what do you see?

TILLIPMAN: So far, I haven't seen any public evidence of something that we would describe as fraudulent or criminally fraudulent or corrupt. It appears to be most likely things that they just don't like. And that's well within the authority of any new administration to come in and simply say, we have different spending priorities. It happens all the time, but it doesn't make it fraud and it doesn't make it corruption. BROWN: And -- and -- and just to follow up on my initial question, why is it important to differentiate that? I mean, as you heard Karoline Leavitt kind of say, look, this is fraud, this is wasteful, this is not reflective of the President's priorities. In your view, why is it important to -- to be precise on wasteful spending? What is good is that versus fraud?

TILLIPMAN: Well, words matter. And by consistently saying that everything that they're finding is fraudulent or corrupt, it gives the impression to the American people that their government is untrustworthy, that there's so much fraud being committed and nobody's doing anything to stop it. And that leads to instability, at least to people to mistrust their government. It's important to speak about these things carefully. There have been, again, centuries of experience within the United States government of rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse and successfully prosecuting it.

So it appears to some people looking at this from the outside that the entire thing is fraudulent. The entire running of the government is corrupt. And that's just simply not the case. We have credible people that do great work for the government every single day rooting this out and prosecuting.

BROWN: But some of them have been let go, right. Like inspector generals and ethics watchdogs.

TILLIPMAN: That's true. One of the key ways that we actually discover actual fraud and corruption is through oversight tools like inspectors general or through encouraging people to come forward with information like whistleblowers and protecting them. And the head of the Office of Special Counsel has just been fired as well as I think we're up to 18 or 19 inspectors general. So when you're eliminating some of the individuals that are charged with doing this, it -- it makes it harder to actually find real fraud.

BROWN: And just to be clear, just because DOGE hasn't put it out doesn't mean fraud doesn't exist, corruption. I remember first day of your class you said corruption is never ending.

TILLIPMAN: Yes, sure. Any time you have any entity, whether it's a company or it's a government spending, you know, trillions of dollars, there's always going to be people out there to take advantage of it. The best you can do is try to -- is to prevent as much as possible, detect it, mitigate it. And the U.S. government does a pretty good job of doing that.

BROWN: "The Washington Post" did a tally and what DOGE it has saved so far, nearly 45 billion. Does it match up with the contracts they put out publicly so far? How -- how would you compare DOGE's transparency with other government agencies?

TILLIPMAN: So we have a lot of websites dedicated in the government to providing transparency to spending. One big one I encourage people to visit is USAspending.gov and it's incredibly transparent. It's a part of the U.S. government infrastructure and anyone with Internet access can access it. That's just one of the websites. Currently it appears that the transparency that DOGE is describing comes primarily from social media platform and usually it's about a sentence regarding something that they've discovered without any kind of backup information to verify some of the accuracy of what they're claiming. So it's -- it's kind of hard to tell exactly what they're looking at, what they perceive or say is fraud and -- and what's actually being recovered.

BROWN: Really quickly, Elon Musk says that he will self-police essentially even though he has billions of dollars' worth of contracts in front of the government. What do you think about that particularly in light of conflict of interest laws?

TILLIPMAN: So the U.S. government multiple tools that it can use to deal with potential conflicts of interest, ranging from criminal conflicts of interest statutes to ethics laws to even conflicts that could arise in -- in terms of the organization. His own companies could have the conflict of interest. You know, as a special government employee, many of them are required to make financial disclosures. He's unpaid, so he doesn't have to.

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Generally, conflicts of interest are vetted through an agency government ethics official where they go through and discuss whether or not some of the things that an individual is working on may create that kind of conflict of interest. They are responsible for identifying some of these things, but it -- it is a complex system and generally self-policing is not the way that we typically deal with conflicts in the United States government. You work with an ethics official to identify whether he's been participating personally or substantially in something, and then we try to figure it out whether that actually has a genuine conflict of interest with -- with his financial interests.

BROWN: Jessica Tillipman, thank you so much. Learned a lot. Appreciate it.

TILLIPMAN: Thank you.

BROWN: And still to come, an alleged school shooting planned for Valentine's Day foiled and the suspect in jail. How police say they prevented a tragedy, up next.

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