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Attorney General Releases Special Counsel's Final Report on Trump; Crews Work to Contain 'Critical' New Fire in S. California. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired January 14, 2025 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: It's Tuesday, January 14. Right now on CNN THIS MORNING.
[05:59:49]
Breaking overnight, Special Counsel Jack Smith's report released to the public. Smith says he had sufficient evidence to convict Donald Trump.
And --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Pressing hard to close this.
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HUNT: Deal on the doorstep? Hostage and ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas inch closer to the finish line this morning.
Plus --
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SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Unfortunately, Mr. Hegseth's background is deeply troubling.
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HUNT: In the spotlight. President-elect Trump's pick to lead the Pentagon faces his first day of confirmation hearings. We'll discuss live with Trump-Vance transition senior adviser Jason Miller.
And then --
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are not in the clear as of yet, and we must not let our guard down.
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HUNT: A dire warning. Near hurricane-force wind gusts posing new threats to fire-ravaged Southern California as a new fire pops up overnight.
All right. It is 6 a.m. Here on the East Coast. This is the full moon over the Capitol dome on this Tuesday morning. Very pretty. Look, there it is. You can see it.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.
Just in overnight, Special Counsel Jack Smith claims there was enough evidence to convict Donald Trump at trial for his actions on January 6, 2021, and says that Trump has not been exonerated for his actions surrounding that day.
Smith's parting words, released overnight by Attorney General Merrick Garland, part of a sweeping 130-page report from Smith's criminal investigation, as well as a letter that Smith wrote to Garland dated January 7.
The report doesn't have extensive new details from the more than 250 witnesses they interviewed, but it represents a sweeping defense of the department's case against President Trump and the landmark decision to charge him with crimes and prosecute him, even as he ran for president again.
In the letter, Smith writes this: quote, "I want to be clear that the ultimate decision to bring charges against Mr. Trump was mine. It is a decision I stand behind fully. To have done otherwise on the facts developed during our work would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and as a public servant."
And in the letter, Smith takes on Trump directly over Trump's repeated claims of, quote, "complete exoneration," end quote, because the government ultimately dropped the case.
Smith writes that Trump's claims that, quote, "dismissal of his criminal cases signifies Mr. Trump's 'complete exoneration.' That is false."
The report itself outlines how President-elect Trump sought to overturn the 2020 election results in several ways, including putting pressure on state election officials to throw out the results.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES (via phone): So, look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Smith also outlined Trump's efforts to pressure his own vice president, Mike Pence.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence! UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Those efforts culminating on January 6, 2021, after Trump addressed a crowd of his supporters before many of them marched on the Capitol to disrupt the transfer of power.
Smith recounts several events from that day, including when Trump sat back at the White House, watching rioters attack the Capitol while sitting in the Oval Office dining room. While there alone, he sent off a tweet. Rioters then read it out loud in almost real time, with a bullhorn.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. U.S. demands the truth.
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HUNT: In the conclusion of that report, Jack Smith writes that he believes the facts and law supported his team's findings against Trump, but only the 2024 election derailed the prosecution.
Smith writes this: quote, "Indeed, but for Mr. Trump's election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial."
Donald Trump's lawyers attempted to keep the report under wraps, but that was ultimately rejected by the courts. Trump himself responded directly to the report on social media overnight. He wrote this, in part, quote, "Jack is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide. THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN!!!"
Our panel is here to discuss: Stephen Collinson, CNN politics senior reporter; Elliot Williams, CNN legal analyst, former federal prosecutor; Kate Bedingfield, CNN political commentator, former Biden White House communications director; and Brad Todd, CNN political commentator and a Republican strategist.
Welcome to all of you. Thank you all for being here.
[06:05:00]
Stephen Collinson, I actually want to start with you as we think about the big picture here, because Donald Trump is correct. The voters have spoken. All of those things that we just saw play out, they happened, and the voters said -- perhaps they didn't say, we don't care about that, but they said we care about other things more. We want to send you back to the Oval Office.
This reads to me as a sweeping defense by Jack Smith of how the department conducted itself in dealing with this matter. How do you read it?
STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN POLITICS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and I think it shows why the president-elect was so keen for none of this to come out before the election.
And it's sobering when you think that the person who allegedly committed these acts will next week swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. Just because we knew a lot of this stuff, we've seen it play out many times. It doesn't mean it's any less shocking.
And while I think millions of Trump's supporters are justified in being jubilant that he will return to power next week, this explains why so many people will see this as a moment of fear and trepidation.
HUNT: Elliot, how do you understand it as -- as the lawyer that you are, a person who has worked inside the department? They clearly -- you know, Jack Smith is also under pressure. Right? He has left. He's separated from the Justice Department.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes.
HUNT: But Trump has suggested that he may go after him in some way. What do you think? Especially this letter that accompanied the report --
WILLIAMS: Right.
HUNT: -- was, I thought, particularly striking.
WILLIAMS: The -- the letter was particularly striking. So back up: what is the purpose of a special counsel report? The law says that whenever a special counsel does his or her work, he must submit, or she must submit, a report to the attorney general detailing the reasons for why they either chose to prosecute, would have prosecuted, or did not.
All these questions, to some extent, even what Stephen was talking about, about the politics behind it, don't matter, at least for the purposes of the report. It's laying out, these are the crimes that we think were committed, and this was all of the evidence that we think did so. So -- and that's there.
I mean, the -- it's clear that, regardless of what anyone thinks of Jack Smith or Donald Trump, evidence was there to convict on any number of offenses, including conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.
Now to this question of that letter, it was really interesting, because all the cover letter had to be was just a statement of Mr. Attorney General, here's our work and here's what we did, but it really was a defense, almost in a defensive way, of the work of the people of the special counsel's office. This is why we did what we did and who we are.
HUNT: Yes. Brad Todd, how do you consider all of this? I mean, every time I go back to that day, that footage is incredibly jarring. And yet, here we are. In six days, Donald Trump's going to be inaugurated.
BRAD TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, the way Donald Trump conducted himself in the aftermath of the 2020 election and particular on January 6, made him rightfully less popular than he's ever been in his entire political career, which is saying something. It was an overhang in the Republican primary.
It's why Ron DeSantis started out 20 points ahead of him. It's because a lot of Republicans, a lot of Trump's own supporters, did not approve of how he conducted himself in the wake of the 2020 election.
However, the prosecutors overshot. And it's not just Jack Smith. It's also Alvin Bragg. They overshot, and the public made a decision on election day that perhaps Donald Trump was not near the threat that continued Democrat governance was.
Some of that's on Jack Smith. Some of that's on Alvin Bragg for biting off more than they could chew, for moving too slowly, for not getting a conviction that would stand up with public scrutiny.
So, I view this today as mainly a P.R. report by Jack Smith. There's not going to be a competing report from the defense in this case. That's not how this works. So, this is -- and there's not much new that the American public is going to be surprised by here.
WILLIAMS: I just -- on the -- the worst possible thing that Jack Smith had was Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg and all of the state prosecutors, because the strongest potential cases against Donald Trump were the ones Jack Smith was bringing, particularly the one in Florida, where --
TODD: But even there, he overshot.
WILLIAMS: Well, but even -- but again, look at this. Look at the conspiracy statute and tell me he overshot. The law is pretty clear on that one. It's just there's a mess of all these state -- these really political state prosecutors.
TODD: He didn't just bring the charge he could win on. He brought more, which gave Donald Trump time to chew up the clock. That's -- that's his fault.
WILLIAMS: Had it just been obstruction of justice, he's convicted like that.
KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think -- Look, it's certainly true that the election results in November indicate that the politics of this moment, Trump has been victorious in the politics of this moment. But he's also about to take office again.
He will be president for four years. He will have access to the levers of power that could potentially allow him to do something like this again.
So, it is -- it is important that this information be out in the public record, be laid out and detailed in this way when we're potentially looking at the possibility of Trump, you know, committing these kinds of acts again.
And so, I think -- I would disagree that it is solely a P.R. document, because I think it is -- it does lay an important predicate for this man who's about to take office and have his hands on the levers of power again.
TODD: The public knows this. I want to give the public credit. The public knows all of these things, and they hold it against Donald Trump. They decided Democrats were a bigger threat this time.
BEDINGFIELD: And I think that the time -- I think that the -- the way that Jack Smith and Merrick Garland proceeded on all of this, timing- wise, I think there are a lot of questions that can be asked about that.
[06:10:10]
HUNT: Well, yes, see, that's what I was going to ask you about specifically.
BEDINGFIELD: Yes.
HUNT: Because it's not just Donald Trump and the right that Jack Smith seems to address in this letter and in this report. He also defends himself against some of these charges on the left that it took too long.
BEDINGFIELD: Right.
HUNT: And kind of goes into great detail about these are the ways in which they delayed. We had to spend months convincing, you know, going to court to get Mike Pence to testify, among other things.
But I mean, how much blame do you put on the Justice Department? Because Democrats seem to -- to lay quite a bit of blame for the delays that Democrats feel.
BEDINGFIELD: Yes. I mean, look, I think if you -- if you look back over the course of these four years, I think there are certainly moments where it is easy to argue that Garland and then Smith should have moved more quickly.
I certainly -- I'm certainly not a lawyer. I obviously respect the challenges that Jack Smith had in moving forward legally in the process. I understand you can't just wave a wand and, you know, get -- compel Mike Pence.
HUNT: It says in the letter at one point, well, we'll get it done by the summer of '23, and that will be well in advance of the election.
As a political reporter, I'm like, that's not in the advance of the election. That is the middle of the election.
BEDINGFIELD: But the other thing that -- I think the other overlay that we have to remember, from a political perspective -- and we've talked about this before.
But, you know, when Biden came into office, you know, one of the things he had campaigned on was the idea of restoring norms, restoring the idea of an independent Justice Department. And so, there was a prevailing political sense that it was -- that Biden should not, and his administration should not in any way be seen as, you know, putting their finger or putting their thumb on the scale here to try to move things forward.
So, it's -- this is one of those questions where it's sort of easy to sit in this moment and for Democrats to say it should have moved more quickly, it should have moved more quickly. But there were countervailing political imperatives when Biden came into office, you know, that I think he was trying to adhere to.
WILLIAMS: Yes, it's not your grandfather's Justice Department anymore. And I think Joe Biden is, in many regards, a relic; and Merrick Garland, to some extent, a relic of that post-Watergate thinking about the Justice Department.
HUNT: Yes.
WILLIAMS: That politics doesn't matter, and we can take the time that it takes to observe.
HUNT: Yes.
WILLIAMS: These are norms that simply don't exist anymore -- more in American politics.
BEDINGFIELD: I appreciate that clarity that you just laid out right there.
TODD: As a Republican, you're just not going to convince me that Merrick Garland and Joe Biden weren't trying as hard as they could to get Donald Trump. I just don't buy it. I don't buy it. They were -- they were doing everything they could.
WILLIAMS: If they were trying as hard as they could to get Donald Trump, they would have. We would be having this conversation two years ago.
BEDINGFIELD: And I can tell -- I can tell you, Joe Biden did not believe that it was good for the country, for it to -- for him to be seen as pursuing Donald Trump, as using the levers of the -- of the Justice Department.
TODD: He should have pardoned him on the first day to move the country past it.
BEDINGFIELD: The Justice Department, you know, to try to -- to go after his political enemy. That was the way Joe Biden -- I mean, I can tell you from having been there, that's the way President Biden was thinking about it.
TODD: I'm not doubting you. But if he really believed that, he should have pardoned him from the first day and got the country past it.
BEDINGFIELD: But that's a different -- no, that's a different -- that's like you're setting up a straw man here. That's a different -- that's a different argument. There's --
HUNT: Last word.
COLLINSON: Here's what I find fascinating. All these prosecutors end up, in their final report, justifying their own failures.
Mueller, Ken Starr, Weiss, or they end up hitting out at the subject of the investigation. What it shows is we don't have a way to investigate and call presidents to account. That's the system right there.
HUNT: Yes, we're going to talk about that later on the show. A very interesting point.
All right. Straight ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, the biggest test yet for Pete Hegseth. Confirmation hearings as Democrats strategize to try to block his nomination. We're going to discuss the path ahead for some of the president-elect's controversial cabinet selections with senior adviser to Donald Trump, Jason Miller.
Plus, Los Angeles bracing for explosive fire growth as dangerous winds are expected near the fire zones.
And in the final stage. Negotiators hammering out the finishing touches on an Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage release deal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KIRBY, SPOKESMAN, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: It's really down to the brass tacks, so there's optimism, but it's cautious optimism, Kasie. Again, we've been here before, and we know that it's not done until it's all done.
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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:18:33]
HUNT: All right, welcome back.
Not only can you now access Special Counsel Jack Smith's newly released report into Donald Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election, you can also read Special Counsel David Weiss's report on the six-year investigation into Hunter Biden's crimes. In it, Weiss slams President Biden as "gratuitous and wrong" for calling the prosecution of his son politically motivated when he pardoned Hunter.
With the Smith and Weiss reports released, there are now zero active special counsels at the DOJ, closing a turbulent eight-year era during which five special counsels oversaw an array of controversies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: The Justice Department tonight naming the former FBI director Robert Mueller special counsel to take over the investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: We learned, remarkably, overnight that the attorney general, William Barr, has appointed John Durham to be a special counsel.
MERRICK GARLAND, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Today I signed an order appointing Jack Smith to serve as special counsel.
VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Moments ago, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee the investigation of classified documents found on President Biden's property.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight, the top federal prosecutor in the Hunter Biden probe now has special counsel status, giving him new authority to investigate the president's son.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All of this now done. And Stephen Collinson, this picks up on the point you were making just before we went to break. This is the end of an era of sorts, right?
[06:20:03]
COLLINSON: Well, I find it very difficult to believe that Pam Bondi, if she becomes the attorney general, is going to announce a special counsel into some issue that will inevitably rise in the Trump White House if there is alleged wrongdoing.
If you have a Congress, in this partisan era, that is very unlikely to constrain a president, whether it's a Republican, and probably going forward, a Democrat, as well, how do you call presidents to account?
I think that's a massive question, and it speaks to the reversal of a process that happened after Watergate, whereby the powers of the president were constrained by Congresses and special counsels.
Now, we have a president coming in who believes he has ultimate power, and there's very little, it seems to me, apart from the courts, to counter that.
HUNT: And there's the Supreme Court immunity ruling on top of that.
WILLIAMS: The irony in all of this is that the whole point of the special counsel regulations and rules and statutes is to take politics out of prosecution.
The goal of why they were invented in the first place was that you would have these special prosecutors that could traverse administrations and had investigative powers. That's all sort of been blown up as people begin to see all institutions, not just prosecutors and government, as just more politicized.
TODD: This is not a new debate. You can go back to 1787, and the framers of the Constitution had this exact debate. How were we going to hold this new executive function accountable?
They came up with an elegant solution, which is the impeachment process. However, we're now in a partisan era where both parties are really, really alike within each other. And so, it's very hard to pull off an impeachment process that both parties can support.
That's probably the way it should be. It probably should be hard to bring charges against an executive president who's, by himself, the one person who controls a branch of government. This is not a new debate, though.
WILLIAMS: I'm going to disagree with you, though, however, as there's a difference between the goals of prosecution and the goals of impeachment.
Impeachment seeks to maintain integrity in the elected officials in the country. Prosecution seeks to punish people for committing crimes. Those are two very different things. I understand they sort of get blurred together in the public mind.
TODD: They set impeachment up as a trial process, I think, for that reason.
WILLIAMS: But it's not to punish violations of criminal law. It's to violations, breaches of the country.
HUNT: Mitch McConnell certainly saw a distinction, in the wake of January 6th.
All right. Coming up here on CNN THIS MORNING, in a matter of hours, Pete Hegseth set to face senators for a confirmation hearing. He hopes, of course, to be the next secretary of defense. We'll speak live to senior adviser to Donald Trump, Jason Miller.
Plus, a new fire erupting overnight as a critical 48 hours looms for Southern California.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:27:07]
HUNT: All right. Fire crews now working to contain a new fire that erupted overnight in Southern California.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(SIRENS)
(END VIDEO CLIP) HUNT: This one is called the Auto Fire. It's now at 0 percent containment. Wind gusts today could reach hurricane-force up to 70 miles an hour.
A rare type of red-flag wind warning also in effect in L.A. and Ventura counties until Wednesday because of those winds threatening more new fire outbreaks spreading the Palisades and Eaton Fires.
I spoke to the L.A. County fire chief on Monday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Are you worried that these new winds may undo the progress that you've been able to make?
ANTHONY MARRONE, L.A. COUNTY FIRE CHIEF: Oh, yes. Absolutely. If we get a new fire start in a different location, it could be very difficult to contain.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: CNN's Michael Yoshida is live for us in Altadena.
Michael, good morning. What are you seeing there and what have we learned overnight?
MICHAEL YOSHIDA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, Kasie.
When you talk about that new fire popping up. Just to put in perspective, that's about an hour West of us, but it's the perfect example of that concern that officials have been talking about. And why, over the last day, throughout the overnight hours, as our team has driven through the Palisades, through Brentwood, here into Altadena, we've seen so many fire crews staging, pre-positioning, trying to be ready for if one of those new sparks, those flare-ups happen, so they can quickly get a handle on it.
Now, while we have that ongoing concern and threat of those fires and new fires this morning, I'm not sure if you can hear, but we have a lot of work happening here in this Altadena neighborhood. Utility crews, gas companies, others hard at work, trying to begin some of that repair work.
Obviously, as you can see behind me, this as we've been talking about, one of those communities that's been just devastated by the Eaton Fire. You can see some of the lines, as well, still hanging down. Just an example of how much work is ahead for these communities in and around Los Angeles.
But again, right now, that most pressing threat, that biggest concern overnight heading into the rest of the day is going to be how those winds continue to potentially shift and what impacts they may have on those fires that they've already been working so hard to get those containment lines around. And what any new fires, such as that Auto Fire, may pop up, as well.
HUNT: All right. Michael Yoshida for us this morning, Michael. Thanks very much for that report.
And that new fire burning right now in Ventura County could spread because of those gusty winds he was just talking about. And the area is under the highest possible threat level from wildfires.
Let's go to our meteorologist, Allison Chinchar, with more on what to expect today.
Allison, good morning.
ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, good morning. And I think that's really been the biggest concern all along.
It's not necessarily, you know, the fires that are there. We have several that are at 100 percent containment. It's all these new fires that just pop up.
What happens to those, especially as those winds continue to rage throughout the day? Here's a look at the red-flag warnings that we have in effect for today.
And some of these even go all the way through Wednesday afternoon. This is both the combination of those strong --
