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Dozens of Countries Block, Limit U.K. Travel Over New COVID Variant; Interview with Former Top Russia Advisor, Fiona Hill; Food Insecurity Surges in America Ahead of Holiday. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired December 21, 2020 - 13:30   ET

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

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[13:31:29]

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN HOST: Much of Europe is closing its borders to travelers from Britain after a new and potentially more contagious variant of the coronavirus has been detected and is rapidly spreading throughout the U.K.

More than 30 countries have either blocked travel to and from the U.K. or imposed some kind of restriction.

So far the U.S. is not among them. And federal health officials say while there's concern that the variant could already be in America, it has not yet been detected.

The change has also trapped British freight drivers in gridlock near a key entryway to Europe.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressing the public just moments ago.

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BORIS JOHNSON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: To our international friends and partners, I want to say, very frankly, that we understand your concerns.

I hope that everybody can see as soon as we were briefed in U.K. government on the vast transmissibility of this new strain at 3:15 on Friday afternoon, we lodged all the necessary information with the World Health Organization. And we took prompt and decisive action the very next day to curb the spread of the new variant.

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GOLODRYGA: Nima Elbagir, senior international correspondent, is outside 10 Downing Street where emergency meetings have been happening all day.

Nima, the prime minister there trying to assure everyone that everything is under control, but a lot of criticism. Just a few days ago he said Christmas wasn't going to be canceled. A completely different story how.

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Over the weekend. he said Christmas wasn't going to be canceled.

And then on Sunday, there was an abrupt U-turn. If you are looking for reassurance from the prime minister's press conference, there wasn't anything to hold on to.

Other than this from Sir Patrick Valance, the chief medical officer for the United Kingdom. He had this to say.

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SIR PATRICK VALANCE, U.K. CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER: Evidence of this virus is it spreads easily. It's more transmissible. We absolutely need to make sure we've got the right level of restrictions in place.

I think it is likely that this will grow in numbers of the variant across the country. And I think it's likely, therefore, that measures need to be increased in some places in due course, not reduced.

So I think it is a case that this will spread more.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ELBAGIR: We've got to make sure that we have the right set of measures in place, that's what Sir Patrick Vallance was saying, Bianna.

That's what people are picking up on because this is the thing that the prime minister and his cabinet seem to have been avoiding for months now, the right set of measures.

They actually lifted a lockdown at the beginning of December in the hope that people would still be able to carry on with Christmas in spite of people saying they couldn't predict they would have this variant at this point in time.

What they could predict is human behavior and action would only make this worse. That's what we're hearing tonight.

Despite the fact there's higher transmissibility with this variant, it doesn't change the fact that, if the lockdown had been expanded, if measures had been taken, we wouldn't have been in this place -- Bianna?

GOLODRYGA: A lot of criticism from the prime minister as well as from the mayor of London as well.

Nima Elbagir, thank you so much.

Well, Bill Barr contradicting the president when it comes to that massive Russia cyber hack. So what will Putin do with all of the information recovered? Fiona Hill, President Trump's former top Russia advisor, joins me next. [13:35:07]

And we are still waiting for the first votes on the coronavirus relief bill that will deliver relief to millions of Americans. We'll bring that to you live when it happens.

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GOLODRYGA: For the first time, the Russian government is now responding to claims that they are behind a massive hack of U.S. government agencies and companies.

[13:40:01]

The Kremlin spokesman telling CNN, quote, "Russia had nothing to do with such attacks and this attack in particular. Any accusations against Russia in this regard are baseless and are probably the continuation of this blind Russia phobia, which is being engaged in relation to any incident."

The denial and word of Russia phobia comes on the heels of President Donald Trump downplaying the hack, saying it isn't as bad as it's being reported. He also suggested that China could be behind it.

Joining me now is Fiona Hill. She was a deputy assistant to President Trump and senor director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council. She's now a senior fellow on foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.

Fiona, thank you so much for joining us. So timely to have you on.

I've been wanting to talk to you about this, because no serious person doubts Russia is behind this attack. Mike Pompeo said as much as did Attorney General William Barr this morning.

Does the fact that this president continues to be out of step with his advisers and intel chiefs in holding Russia accountable, does that embolden Putin to carry out operations like this hacking attack?

FIONA HILL, SENIOR FELLOW ON FOREIGN POLICY, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION & FORMER MEMBER, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNSEL: Of course, it does. To really be able to push back on an attack of this nature or future attacks, we have to have a unified front. As you've seen, we've had anything but over the last several years.

GOLODRYGA: You've described this attack as classic espionage that Russia, before that the Soviet Union have engaged in for many years. Others say it is much more sinister than that.

Now that the Russians have this incredible trove of data, what do you think Putin will do with it? Is there a chance he could weaponize it?

HILL: I think that's part of the dilemma in trying to figure out what exactly information and data he has so we can determine what he can do with this. We have to bear in mind that it was, in fact, the Chinese that did

something similar a few years ago in terms of exfiltrating enormous amounts of data from various databases, U.S. government databases, including a lot of personal information from anyone who had gone through a security clearance and people who are full-time employees of the government.

And, you know, in every single one of those cases obviously our adversaries have an opportunity to do something with it. There are a lot of criminal groups.

Just before the election, we were very worried about ransom-wear attacks in hospitals.

So there's all kinds of unfortunate possibilities of ways in which this data can be used. It should give us great cause for concern.

GOLODRYGA: Do you have any doubt that it was the Russians behind the latest attack?

HILL: I have no doubt whatsoever at all. I think it's very beneficial for them to be able to cast this cloud of doubt over things as well.

I mean, many of our colleagues call this implausible deniability. Very quick to deny everything. This sends people scrambling around. often looking for culprits elsewhere.

But also we have to bear in mind this is a win-win for Russia. It's getting into the systems and exfiltrating information. Then being accused.

All of us spending weeks trying to pass what they've done and talking about it at the highest levels of government and here on the media as well.

This gives them an awful lot of publicity emphasizing the prowess of the Russian intelligence services.

GOLODRYGA: They've been doing this for nine months undetected until recently.

I want to turn to the new to a CNN exclusive report on details on the poisoning of Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny. Our Clarissa Ward linked to a special toxins team inside Russia's FSB, which follow Navalny for years.

Today, we are learning that a member of that team confessed in an incredible 49-minute phone call that a solid form of the toxin was placed in Navalny's underwear. You cannot make this up.

Russia is denying this. But given your expertise on Russia and President Putin, how do you square such a sloppy operation with the extreme sophistication of the SBR cyberattack?

HILL: Well, these are carried out by different units. You know, there's a lot of experts that have been talking about this for some time, that you obviously have the A Team and the B Team.

People have been wondering, where are the A Team. Usually, the foreign intelligence, the SBR, and the B team, often the GRU, the military intelligence carrying out these operations, including targeting Navalny.

People have been worried about where the A Team, the guys that we haven't seen, what are they up to?

Now we've discovered they're out there in cyber space, that their very best resources have been thrown in the new arena, not just of espionage, but of warfare, hybrid warfare, which has been in the cyber realm.

[13:44:56]

So we're seeing the GRU, the military intelligence, who are carrying out these other operations. It is really remarkable that Navalny was able to get the person who was responsible for his poisoning on the phone in this way, too.

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GOLODRYGA: He didn't alter his voice. I listened to the entire conversation. It was stunning. You called the GRU the B Team. The FSB may be the Z team.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin denied the poisoning. He said, if they ordered it, he would have finished the job, gloating about that in his sinister chuckle. They're denying the hack.

But what is an effective way for the Biden administration, the incoming Biden administration, to respond to and deter Putin while trying to maintain some workable relationship?

HILL: The first thing we have to do is get our own act together. We need to have a system set up where the president, all the members of the cabinet, all of the key agencies and departments are all on the same page. Clearly. that's going to be the first step.

A full investigation behind the scenes of what's happened here, what kind of information has been exfiltrated. Then we need to get the systems that we have in place fully working together.

They've been undermined by the president being at odds with his own administration.

We already have the Cyber and Infrastructure Security -- Chris Krebs was fired from it. Give them the opportunity and resources to do this. We need Congress on the act. We need to be working with our allies.

There's a NATO component because of the critical infrastructure attacks. And there's a component of working not just with European allies but also the Japanese, Indians, South Koreans.

Other countries will be very concerned about this because we can be sure that the Russians have also learned similar attacks through the vulnerable software programs.

We need to be working on this in a concerted effort and a united front.

GOLODRYGA: It is amazing and kind of sad we're talking about what a Biden administration can do because we're not counting on this president doing much in his final few weeks in office.

If we can touch on that and go back to Trump's refusal to speak out about Putin. In the past, it was explained as a sensitivity that he had that Russia could help him in his 2016 win.

This attack is different. It had nothing to do with Trump personally. And yet, he still cannot speak out.

Does that possibly suggest to you that this is more than Trump's ego, that Putin may in fact have something on him?

HILL: Look, Putin's got now, with all of these hacks, probably something on everybody.

I think what it is, is more that the president has admired Putin for some considerable period of time. Not just Putin, but other similar larger-than-life celebrity leaders who seem to have unchecked power.

I think he's finding it very hard to figure out that Putin would actually do something that's attacking the United States on his watch.

I think he was fairly convinced that his own personal chemistry with Putin would be able to push off these kinds of attacks.

I think very sadly where you see a situation where people don't put the country first -- and there's been unfortunately a very long pattern of people putting their own interests first during this administration -- that then we open up the vulnerability to this kind of thing.

What we have to do is, again, pull ourselves together here, get the systems back in place, and think again that this is an attack on our country.

It isn't about one person's relationship with another person.

GOLODRYGA: This is a point you were making almost one year ago at the impeachment hearings as well.

Fiona Hill, thank you so much for your expertise. We really appreciate it. Thank you for coming on. Thank you so much.

HILL: Thank you, Bianna.

GOLODRYGA: Happy holidays.

HILL: Thank you. You, too. Good-bye.

[13:48:47] GOLODRYGA: Coming up next, billions of dollars in food assistance can't come fast enough for the Americans waiting in long lines at food banks across the country. We'll take you live to one of them after the break.

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[13:53:42]

GOLODRYGA: The stimulus relief bill could not come at a more dire time. Americans struggling to pay bills amid the pandemic are also struggling to keep food on the table.

Food insecurities are especially troubling as we head into the holidays.

CNN's Rosa Flores is at a food warehouse in south Florida.

Rosa, the need for food there has doubled since the beginning of the pandemic. It's heartbreaking.

ROSE FLORES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Bianna, it really is. There are so many people are suffering in silence, because they don't have money to put food on the table.

That's why everything you see around me here at Feeding South Florida, it's not just food. This is hope for mothers and fathers who are hoping to feed their children.

One in five people here in south Florida don't know where their next food will come from. That includes about 300,000 children.

That's why we're seeing moms and dads waiting in line for hours for a box of food.

That's where you met Deborah Hightower this weekend. She is an accountant, 57 years old, a mother of three teenagers, who was shaking with emotion in her car, because she says she felt guilty for being there.

She was afraid the person behind her might have more needs than her. She just got out of the hospital recently and she has lost her job twice during the pandemic.

[13:55:08]

Here's what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEBORAH HIGHTOWER, FOOD BANK RECIPIENT: I've always been hesitant about -- I -- sorry. I would hate for me to get the last of something and the person behind me may be in a worse position.

I'm very independent, and don't ask for help, but sometimes God humbles you. (END VIDEO CLIP)

FLORES: Bianna, there are so many Deborahs across the country. People from this food bank only expect the need to grow as the pandemic continues to surge.

GOLODRYGA: Deborah has nothing to be ashamed of, nor the millions of people who are food insecure. It is a tragedy. Hopefully, Congress can help fast.

Rosa Flores, thank you so much.

Next, President-Elect Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, are set to get the coronavirus vaccine this afternoon. And it comes as we're getting the first video in of people receiving the newly approved Moderna vaccine.

Brooke Baldwin picks up our coverage right after the break.

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