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The Lead with Jake Tapper

White House Restricts Travel from India; COVID Cases in India Top 300K for 9th Day in a Row; NYT: Firing of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Becomes Central Focus of Federal Investigation into Giuliani; Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) Is Interviewed About Investigation Involving Giuliani. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired April 30, 2021 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:02]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Lizz Winstead, thank you so much, and, again, "THE STORY OF LATE NIGHT" premiers Sunday at 9:00 right here on CNN. Certainly we'll be looking forward to that.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Great to talk to Lizz.

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THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER starts right now.

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JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: A new COVID catastrophe now having a ripple effect in the United States.

THE LEAD starts right now.

Breaking today: The White House will start restricting travel from India as bodies are burned in mass cremations during a crippling outbreak there.

The investigation into Rudy Giuliani ramping up in a big way. Now we're learning it might all be about one specific official whom President Trump fired.

Plus, another state in the United States on the verge of passing a law adding new limits to mail-in voting, and it's a battleground state that Trump won in 2020.

Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

And we begin with breaking news in our health lead today. The White House just announced that the U.S. will start restricting travel to the U.S. from India because the COVID crisis there in India is so devastating.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins joins us now from the White House with this breaking news.

And, Kaitlan, when exactly do these restrictions go into effect, and tell us who is impacted.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: So, Jake, they are not going into effect immediately. This is not starting until actually 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, May 4th. That's when you'll start seeing this start going into place and we should be clear that does not apply to U.S. citizen. If you're a U.S. citizen, you can still come into the country. Those international testing standards, however, are still in place.

But, instead, this is going to apply to non-U.S. citizens who have been in India in the last 14 days. It's pretty similar language to the other travel restrictions for other countries that are in place, and it also doesn't apply to humanitarian workers.

The White House made that clear earlier today, because that's been something that's a big concern as humanitarian workers have been going back and forth in addition to the U.S. sending tat supply -- those supplies of oxygen, PPE, things that are desperately needed in India right now as they are dealing with this record number of cases.

But, Jake, the White House said they came to this decision after conferring with the advice of the CDC, national security experts, really this is something that's been under way, a discussion at least under way for several days here now, and they have now made this decision, but it doesn't go into effect until Tuesday just to be clear.

TAPPER: -- Harris, whose mother was from India, was Indian-American ultimately. She just spoke about this.

What did the vice president have to say?

COLLINS: Yeah, she actually still has family in India. She said she's not spoken with them since the announcement was made by the White House today, but she did comment on this. She's the highest ranking official from the White House so far to actually talk about this on cameras, and this is what she told reporters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have a responsibility as the United States in particular as it relates to the people that we have partnered with over the years to step up when people are in a time of need. Tonight, in fact, we're going to be sending a plane with supplies that will include oxygen with an expectation that that will provide some level of relief.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: So we haven't actually heard from President Biden on this yet, Jake. He's in Delaware for the weekend, but I do expect he'll address that before they actually go into place on Tuesday. TAPPER: In January 2020, candidate Biden attacked then President

Trump for the, quote, reactionary travel bans that Trump proposed during the Ebola crisis, but now he is going to do his own travel ban.

COLLINS: Yeah. He was critical because then when Donald Trump was, of course, still a private citizen, he had complained that Obama and Biden did not put travel measures in place in that situation. That was something that you later heard officials say they actually believed worked out in the end.

But President Biden did talk about that as a candidate and now, of course, he is president. These are decisions that are now on his plate and he has to make them. There are a lot of questions also that I've been seeing about why this didn't happen sooner. People asking why these travel restrictions hadn't gone into place given that we've seen these numbers skyrocketing in India for ten days now.

So the question -- I think that's kind of a balancing act there for the White House of when is the right time, is it dire enough that this needs to go into place and according to the CDC, this is the decision they have now made, Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Kaitlan Collins at the White House.

Continuing in our world lead now, the situation in India could not be more dire with sources telling CNN that the White House travel restrictions starting May 4th are as a result. Today has been yet another day of bodies piling up and crematoriums unable to keep up with the influx of dead. Indian families desperate and unable to give their loved ones a respectful sendoff. Hospitals full and running out of supplies.

Today marked the ninth consecutive day in India where more than 300,000 cases were reported.

And as CNN's Sam Kiley reports now from New Delhi, with only 2 percent of India fully vaccinated, this nightmare is likely just beginning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A sensor reveals dangerously low levels of oxygen. Stifled by COVID-19, this canister of gas buys this patient time. All of these patients arrived barely able to breathe. This isn't a medical clinic. It's a tent on the outskirts of India's capital run by volunteers.

Without the initiative being shown by these volunteers from the Hemkunt Foundation who are providing oxygen on the street on the outskirts of Delhi, they say many dozens, perhaps over 100 patients would be in deep trouble medically now. They already had one death just over there earlier on today.

They have treated over 100 people who have come in desperate for oxygen, unable to breathe, and it's all about this, the supply of these oxygen cylinders. It's a 300-mile drive each way to get one of these filled and brought back to Delhi. They cost about $25 when filled.

How easy has it been to find oxygen?

INDERPREET SINGH, HEMKUNT FOUNDATION VOLUNTEER: Oh, my God, trust me. This has been the toughest thing we are facing.

KILEY: With COVID-19 infections and number of deaths breaking records daily in India, many patients in Delhi have given up on hospital treatment where they know oxygen is scarce and beds often shared.

Pankaj Chandrawal was turned away by three hospitals. He took off his oxygen mask demanding to be heard.

PANKAJ CHANDRAWAL, COVID-19 VICTIM: They are just not entertaining anything and they're just refusing all things. I cannot tell to whom I can blame. It is both government and the hospitals also.

KILEY: Bottled oxygen is mostly produced outside Delhi and neighboring states are prioritizing their own needs, and so the city gasps, and many die unrecorded in their homes.

(INAUDIBLE) collects the bodies of patients who die at home. He'll pick up three in this one-hour run. Many are even afraid to take their dying loved ones to hospital.

Prashant Sharma's family decided to keep his grandmother at home.

PRASHANT SHARMA, MOURNER: We were scared seeing the condition around so we got scared if we had to go to any nearby hospital who is going, to you know, be in touch with her, who is going to give us the information and what is going on within the hospital.

KILEY: India's government has promised a vaccination campaign with renewed vigor, but with around only 2 percent of the nation inoculated so far, that's cold comfort here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KILEY (on camera): Now, Jake, the 2 percent figure is we believe reliable. But the figures for the numbers of people infected and dying here are woefully inadequate. For example, here in Delhi, the official figure for death toll in the last 24 hours has been around 375. We know from talking to people running crematoria that that figure is at least double that and those three individuals that we saw picked up, for example, very unlikely to be recorded as part of India's official death toll, Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Sam Kiley in New Delhi, India, thank you so much for that sobering report.

CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins me now.

And we should note, Sanjay, that this crisis in India hits very close to members of the CNN family. Our colleague Fareed Zakaria lost his mother to COVID in India just a few weeks ago. Sanjay, you have family in India. How are they doing? How difficult is

it to watch this situation unraveling there?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, first of all, we're very close. I have a lot of family, most of my extended family outside the United States lives in New Delhi, and we're communicating all the time by WhatsApp. I'm the only doctor in the family so all questions in the family, medical nature come to me, and one of our favorite uncles passed away a couple days ago which was quite shocking. He was in his early 70s, pretty health and he died of COVID.

So, know, I think what strikes me when I hear this and I see Sam's report and Clarissa's report and talk to my relatives is there's still a bit of a disconnect. My relatives are taking this seriously now, but I think that they were getting the message a few weeks ago and they were happy about it, that they thought they were through this. That's what they were essentially told.

Look, India has gotten through this whole thing. So, I think it's a huge amount of whiplash. They are staying home. People are becoming more diligent about wearing max. Mask-wearing had gone way down.

[16:10:01]

So, you know, Delhi is in lockdown they say until May 3rd, but you can see in Sam's reporting, you can see in Clarissa's reporting, there's still a lot of people out and about. So, there's a real sense of trepidation, Jake. I think this is first time I really over this past year I've actually hear them sound scared.

TAPPER: I'm so sorry about your uncle, Sanjay. What was his name?

GUPTA: Harender, and he was sort of the favorite uncle of all of our cousins, you know, sort of the natural gifted storyteller in our family, and, you know, I didn't -- I didn't even know he was sick because everything was fine and then it just happened very suddenly, Jake.

TAPPER: I'm so sorry.

Let's turn to the medical side of this. There's a variant spreading in India. What do we know about this variant and how concerned should we in the United States be about it, especially considering the fact that people are still traveling from India to the United States?

GUPTA: Well, we don't know a lot about the variant. We don't know a lot about what the impact of this variant is because there's not a lot of genetic sequencing that we talk about, so we know that people develop COVID but they don't know what specific variant of the virus is causing their illness because they are not sequencing enough.

What we do know about this variant a type of it has been seen in South Africa. A type of it has been seen in California, so it's not just relegated to India. It's probably already spread around the world and now being picked up in various places. It's also becoming increasingly clear from Dr. Fauci now that the

vaccines that we're talking about do seem to be protective against this variant, whether you're here in the United States getting a vaccine or anywhere else. Obviously the problem there is that not enough people have that sort of immunity yet.

TAPPER: Yeah. So, let's turn to the good news in this pandemic or what passes for good news in the pandemic. Today marks a huge milestone, 100 million Americans fully vaccinated. Now, states are loosening restriction and have been for some time.

It seems promising although that's still less than a third of the United States population, but do we need to be concerned? I mean, there's -- still, I mean, there's 26 percent of the American people including almost half of Republicans who will not get vaccinated, according to polling.

GUPTA: Yeah, I certainly think coming out of India and talking about this, I think India in some ways we have to think of that as a cautionary tale when you talk about concern. Having said that, I think that we are in, you know, really good position, you know, in terms of the overall number of dose of vaccine.

One thing that's become abundantly clear to me is I've talked to many people who I've been talking to for the last year is that we focus on the number of people vaccinated understandably. That's immeasurable, but the thing that makes me more optimistic is that we see a dramatic decrease in death rates, hospitalization rates and cases are also coming down.

So the immunity, it's not herd immunity yet but the overall status of immunity seems to be having a positive effect. We saw in the U.K. We saw it in Israel and we're seeing that here. That's the real good news, regardless of what the numbers of vaccinated are. The end product is we want to see those three things come down, cases, hospitalizations and they are.

TAPPER: So, Sanjay, there's FDA official who says authorization of kids aged 12 to 15 can skip the FDA advisory process. And so, Pfizer and Moderna are both looking to get authorization for that age group. What does that mean for the timeline? When can 12 to 15-year-olds start going to get appointments to get vaccinated?

GUPTA: Jake, I can tell you just sort of behind the scenes, our unit, we were prepared for the possibility that that might happen today. So we don't know exactly when it's going to be happen, but it's going to be soon. We're not, as you point out, going to see the whole process with the advisory committee meeting making the recommendations.

The FDA is still going to look at this data but essentially they are amending an existing emergency use authorization. So, that's really going to expedite it. It should be very soon, Jake.

TAPPER: All right. I hope so. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much, and, again, our deepest condolences on your uncle. May his memory be a blessing. GUPTA: Thank you.

TAPPER: New information on the Rudy Giuliani raid. Why it may all center on a key firing by President Trump, a name you might remember from impeachment, the first one at least.

And the epidemic of the big lie. The shocking number of Republicans who still falsely do not think that Joe Biden won the election fairly. It's in our new CNN poll. Stay with us.

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[16:18:33]

TAPPER: In our politics lead today, new details about what feds are actually investigating after they raided Rudy Giuliani's home and office on the upper east side of Manhattan this week.

"The New York Times" reports that the raid was connected to former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. You might remember then-President Trump removed her as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in 2019 and as she testified in the impeachment inquiry, Trump was on Twitter attacking her at that very moment.

According to "The New York Times", in the midst of Giuliani and a bunch of shady characters trying to dig up dirt on the Bidens, Giuliani wanted her fired, but at whose direction? Former President Trump? Ukrainian officials? Was Giuliani trying to play both sides?

The feds are going to great lengths to answer that key question as CNN's Jessica Schneider now reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): New details about the investigation into Rudy Giuliani and what exactly investigators are searching for. "The New York Times" now reports at least one of the search warrants served yesterday sought information on the former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. The same Marie Yovanovitch former President Trump fired in April 2019 and who testified as a witness in his first impeachment trial.

MARIE YOVANOVITCH, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO UKRAINE: Our Ukraine policy has been thrown into disarray and shade interests the world over have learned how little it takes to remove an American ambassador who does not give them what they want.

[16:20:04]

SCHNEIDER: Investigators want to determine if Giuliani worked to get Yovanovitch ousted from her benefit to help Trump or benefit Ukrainian interests as he sought dirt from them on the Bidens. It's all part of the long-running criminal investigation into Giuliani and an inquiry into whether he worked as an unregistered foreign agent for Ukraine while also serving as President Trump's personal attorney.

Federal agents served a search warrant on his apartment and office Wednesday seizing several electronic devices.

RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER PRESIDENT TRUMP'S ATTORNEY: Well, about 6:00 in the morning, there was a big bang, bang, bang on the door and outside were seven, seven FBI agents with a warrant for electronics. I've offered to give these to the government and talk it over with them for two years. I don't know why they have to do this. The agents seemed somewhat apologetic, I might say.

SCHNEIDER: Giuliani insists he's never acted as a foreign agent.

GIULIANI: I've never represented a Ukrainian national or official before the United States government. I've declined it several times. I've had contracts in countries like the Ukraine. In the contract is a clause that says, I will not engage in lobbying or foreign representation. I don't do it because I felt it would be too compromising.

SCHNEIDER: Giuliani was a prominent figure on the 2020 campaign trail for Trump and repeatedly floated false information about the Bidens' ties to Ukraine.

GIULIANI: The amount of crimes that the Democrats committed in Ukraine are astounding, and when you say investigating Hunter Biden, I mean, Joe Biden was the guy who did the bribe and Joe Biden was the guy who took the bribe in order to protect Burisma.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER: Now, Rudy Giuliani was repeatedly asked last night if this criminal probe could be more than just about that possible violation of the Foreign Agent's Registration Act. Giuliani, though, says he's not been told anything about the investigation by the feds.

And meanwhile, Jake, federal officials, they are really anticipating here a long legal fight over what's contained inside the electric anything devices seized because no doubt Giuliani's attorneys will be arguing that a lot of it in there is subject to attorney-client privilege.

TAPPER: Right, as Michael Cohen's attorneys argued before him.

Jessica Schneider, thanks so much.

Let's bring in Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. He is the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Senator -- oh, I'm sorry, Chairman Warner, good to see you. Thanks for joining us.

So, we're told by Giuliani's attorney that in the last two years, the Justice Department has not issued a single subpoena or asked for information. Suspicions of Giuliani's activity in Ukraine is not new.

So what do you make of the investigating -- an investigation escalating so significantly right now? I mean, that is a big, bold, audacious move to raid the home and office of the president's attorney, not to mention those of the associates that are also wrapped up in this.

SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA): Well, Jake, again, I don't have any details on the Justice Department investigation, but I do know this -- we knew over a year ago, it came out in the first impeachment trial, that Rudy Giuliani was obsessed about trying to find dirt on the Bidens, that he clearly and I felt this was one of the reasons why I vote for the impeachment the first time was taking out our ambassador. Obviously the phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president was inappropriate.

But one thing you've got to give Rudy Giuliani, he does not lack for chutzpah because we knew all this -- a year ago, yet Rudy Giuliani and others, I might add, were continuing to be used by what has now become fairly obvious, Russian agents to spread part of their disinformation campaign against Joe Biden throughout the whole balance of 2020.

I can tell you, Jake, that there were a number of Republican senators who would go to Giuliani and others in the Trump orbit and urge them to back off, that they were being knowingly or unknowingly manipulated. And yet here we are, you know, four, five, six months after the end of the election and Giuliani is still pleading I guess willful ignorance I guess is what his plea is.

TAPPER: Investigators also served a search warrant for a Giuliani associate and subpoenaed his assistant, Jo Ann Zafonte (ph), to appear before a grand jury next month. Does this all seem to you to be in line with an investigation for someone who nearly did not register as a foreign lobbyist, which is in the past deemed a bureaucratic paperwork crime?

WARNER: Jake, again, I'm not going to pass legal judgment on what the Justice Department is doing, but you said at the outset of our conversation that the Justice Department having this kind of raid on somebody as prominent as Rudy Giuliani, someone who had been a former U.S. attorney, someone who had been acting as Donald Trump's lawyer, I think they would have to hit a pretty high bar of certainty to take that action.

[16:25:08]

And, again, it's already in the public record what happened in terms of his involvement with the Ukrainian ambassador.

What I find, again, a bit remarkable in my mind, is even with that forewarning he continued to spread misinformation, disinformation and has been fairly evident by lots of public reporting, a lot of that misinformation and disinformation was the product of a Russian disinformation and misinformation campaign perpetrated by agents of Russia through Ukrainian fronts.

TAPPER: Chairman Mark Warner, thank you so much, sir. Good to see you. Appreciate your time.

One hundred million Americans now fully vaccinated as the happiest place on earth welcomes back guests for the first time in a year, and it's not the only place about to see big crowds. Stay with us.

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