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McCarthy Changes Debt Limit Plan; E. Jean Carroll Expected to Testify; Navalny's Solitary Confinement Extended; Biden Meets with South Korean President; Thousands Evacuated from Sudan; Taliban Kills Mastermind Behind Kabul Attack. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired April 26, 2023 - 09:00   ET

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

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SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Right now, a high stakes meeting behind closed doors as Congress clashes over trillions of dollars. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy wants to force President Biden to the negotiating table. The big problem, his own party might not be on board with his plan to hold a vote today. The clock is ticking to cut a deal.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Rolling out the red carpet. North Korea's nuclear threat (INAUDIBLE) President Biden is preparing for a state visit with South Korea's president this morning. We're going to bring you those important moments ahead.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: An urgent manhunt across multiple states after four detainees escape a Mississippi jail. One of them suspected of shooting and killing a man right after he got out. The latest from police coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SIDNER: We begin on Capitol Hill, where right now Republican House leadership is meeting behind closed doors discussing a big course reversal in their one-year plan to raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion, while making deep spending cuts. Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his allies agreed to two significant changes after scrambling behind the scenes overnight to get enough Republican support to pass the package today. McCarthy can only afford to lose four votes. Even if the House does pass the bill, though, President Biden has vowed to veto it.

CNN's Lauren Fox is tracking all of this and he joins us now live from Capitol Hill.

What are you hearing from party leaders?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they still have some work to do this morning to understand whether or not these changes that they made overnight are going to be enough to shore up the votes they need to pass this legislation later today. Republicans huddling behind closed doors as we speak. That's when we're going to get the best and first insights into whether or not lawmakers who had concerns with this bill are starting to get behind it.

Some of the changes that were made last night were made to try to get support from conservatives. Some of the changes made last night were meant to get support from some midwestern Republicans.

The first change that they made is speeding up when work requirements would go into effect for some social safety net programs. The other big change they made is they are not going to repeal some of the biofuel tax credits that were included in this legislation. That was a deep concern for some Iowa Republicans who were arguing that they may not back this proposal if those were included.

These changes came, Sara, after leadership for days has been arguing that the negotiations on this bill were closed, that they were not going to open them back up, that this was it, take it or leave it. That changed in the 11th hour last night as they realized that they just weren't going to have the support that they needed. It's critical that Kevin McCarthy shows the White House, shows Senate Democrats that he can unite his conference.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, Lauren Fox there for us on Capitol Hill.

Now, even though there does appear to be some movement today on Capitol Hill, as you just heard from Lauren, the danger of a default has not gone away. So, what happens if the United States does default on its debt? First, it no longer would have enough money to pay all of its bills in full and on time, which means the government would likely have to delay payments or default on some of its commitments. To us regular folks, that could mean things like delays in paying Social Security payments, veterans benefits and federal employees' salaries.

A default would also have a major impact on the U.S. economy and the global financial markets. It would also raise the cost to borrow, making it more difficult for businesses and even average Americans to borrow money. Even just the threat of a default that happened back in 2011 caused the only credit rating downgrade in our nation's history.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said that she believes the so- called extraordinary measures her department has taken should allow the government to pay its obligations until early June. According to three different analyses, early June is a key timeframe because tax receipts are less than expected so far this season.

John.

BERMAN: Thanks, Sara.

Later this morning, former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll is expected to testify in the civil battery and defamation trial against Donald Trump. During fiery opening statements, Carroll's attorney said he will call witnesses, other alleged victims of Trump's, to show what he called Trump's pattern of alleged violent behavior.

[09:05:05] Trump's attorney fired back and questioned the plausibility of Carroll's allegations. Carroll claims that Trump raped her in a New York City department store dressing room in the 1990s and then defamed her when he repeatedly denied her claims.

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig joins us now.

Counselor, great to see you.

This is a civil case, which is important to remind people because --

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: First of all, the stakes are different. The stakes here are only money. No one's going to jail. No one's getting convicted of anything.

Perhaps more importantly, the burden of proof here legally is different for the plaintiff, for E. Jean Carroll. She does not have to prove her case beyond a reasonable doubt. She only has to prove her case by what we call a preponderance of the evidence, meaning more likely than not, 50.1 percent likelihood.

BERMAN: She testifies today. She gets on the stand today. What are the structural advantages that the plaintiff, E. Jean Carroll, has in this case?

HONIG: So, the biggest advantage E. Jean Carroll has in this case is she's there. She's actually in the courtroom, in opposition to Donald Trump, who apparently is not going to physically appear. Now, he doesn't have to because this is a civil case. If it was a criminal case, he would have to be there for the trial.

This case is going to come down to, who does the jury believe more, E. Jean Carroll's account of what happened or Donald Trump's denial of what happened. And to that end, if you have a person who's there and present, the jury will see that, first of all, as a sign of respect, I think juries feel like it's disrespectful for somebody not to show. E. Jean Carroll will take the stand. She will testify live. She will be subject to live cross-examination. In contrast, the jury's probably only going to see clips of Donald Trump's depositions. And I think naturally a jury is going to say, we're going to tend to default towards the person who actually showed up.

BERMAN: E. Jean Carroll also has corroborating witnesses.

HONIG: Yes. So, a couple of key things.

First of all, there are two witnesses who this judge is going to allow to be called who claim that E. Jean Carroll told them back at this sort of undefined date in the mid-1990s about what had happened. That could be important because E. Jean Carroll's lawyers are going to say, she told them 25, 30 years ago when this happened. Was she just making it up then. It's going to go against this charge that she just recently made this up. And also the judge -- and I think sort of controversially, legally, is allowing in evidence of witnesses, who I think may testify today, who claim that Donald Trump assaulted them, sexually assaulted them, on other occasions years apart from the Carroll allegation, which the plaintiff will argue goes to sort of his M.O. This is what he did. But I think Trump's lawyers will argue, perhaps on appeal, if there's an appeal, that's too much, that wasn't relevant enough to this case.

BERMAN: So, E. Jean Carroll takes the stand today, of course. Trump's attorneys will have a chance to cross-examination. What's their strategy?

HONIG: They're going to argue this whole allegation is made up by E. Jean Carroll. First of all they're going to say, there is a real problem in the lack of specificity. E. Jean Carroll does not know the date, does not know the time of year, does not even know the year. She claims it was 1995 or 1996. And they're going to say, that means Donald Trump can't defend himself because if she pinpointed a day, who knows, maybe Trump was out of town that a day, maybe he has an alibi witness. They're going to claim E. Jean Carroll has bad motivations here. They're going to argue that she's been supported and spurred on by political opponents of Donald Trump. And there's some truth to that. Doesn't mean she's lying, but it's certainly fair game for the jury to take into account.

BERMAN: Carroll's attorneys know all this, right?

HONIG: Yes.

BERMAN: So, how do they try to protect themselves against that line from the Trump team?

HONIG: Yes, so I think they're going to argue, look, you have to look at all the factors here. Look at the corroborating witnesses. I think those two witnesses that she told at the time are going to be really important. And I think if you're E. Jean Carroll's lawyers, you're going to say, folks, he's trying to defend himself. He's not here. He didn't even show you the respect of showing up. He didn't even have the guts to take that stand and to subject himself to cross- examination, unlike, I'm playing the role here, unlike my client, E. Jean Carroll, who stood up here, took an oath, took the testimony, and withstood cross-examination.

BERMAN: And, of course, they've also already argued that many times rape victims do not come forward, go public -

HONIG: Yes.

BERMAN: With the claims right away.

HONIG: For very good reasons that go to things that we've overlooked in the law enforcement community for to long.

BERMAN: All right, Elie Honig, we will be watching closely today. Thanks so much for the help.

HONIG: For sure. Thanks.

BERMAN: Kate. BOLDUAN: This morning, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is back in solitary confinement. A short time ago he appeared in court by video to face new criminal charges his team says. And this comes after new reports of him being limited food and possibly poisoned again while in jail.

Now, according to his spokesperson, Navalny will now spend a total of 158 days in solitary confinement for this round of punishment. A typical solitary sentence in Moscow is usually no more than 15 days. You see what's happening here.

Scott McLean is tracking this one from London. He's joining us now.

First and foremost, Scott, tell us more about what you're hearing about these new charges.

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so, Kate, an account used by Alexei Navalny said that he was being accused of committing terrorist attacks while he was in prison. So, this is a brand-new charge, carries a maximum sentence of 35 years behind bars. And his team says that it relates to two things. First, comments made not by Alexei Navalny but by his chief of staff last summer.

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And, secondly, it relates to the killing of a Russian journalist in a St. Petersburg cafe earlier this month. Investigators in that case have blamed Ukrainian agents working in collaboration with people from Navalny's anti-corruption foundation, which denies any involvement.

But the reason that Alexei Navalny was in court today is about a second case, this one on charges of extremism, maximum penalty there 30 years. The judge, today, ruled in favor of prosecutors, which wanted to limit the amount of time that he had to review the materials in the case. And we're talking about 196 volumes of material that his daughter says has 250 pages each, double spaced. So, by my math, Navalny would need to read more than five pages per minute, 16 hours a day, for the next ten days straight, in order to get through all of that material. And this all may be a moot point anyways because his team saying that in the penal colony that he is in, he's not allowed to review documents there anyway.

BOLDUAN: Then -- I laugh only because it seems -- it's just so ridiculous that - that - that what it - what he - what he is facing. But, regardless, Navalny looks thin in the video that we do see of him, that we saw of him this morning. What more are you learning about the conditions that he's facing right now in prison?

MCLEAN: Yes, so, first off, Kate, he's going back into solitary confinement for another 15 days just as there are concerns about his worsening health. His team said just two weeks ago that he lost 17 or 18 pounds in just a two-week period or so. And his daughter says that he's being limited as to the food that he can buy from the canteen. And even when he does buy food, she says this. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DARIA NAVALNAYA, ALEXEI NAVALNY'S DAUGHTER: He buys the food, which, as you know, oats. It's nothing - it's nothing luxurious. He buys the oats. The oats are brought to him, shown to him, and then are just destroyed. So, he can't eat.

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MCLEAN: So his team says that he's also having severe stomach issues, which they say may suggest that he's being poisoned, albeit very slowly. Now, that may -- his lawyer says that, look, that may sound sort of paranoid to a normal person, but, of course, not to Alexei Navalny, who, as we all know, has been poisoned before, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely right.

Scott, thank you for the update.

Sara.

SIDNER: Next hour, a critical meeting at the White House. President Joe Biden will welcome South Korea's president for an official state visit. But beyond the pomp and circumstance, the two leaders must discuss some very serious business, including North Korea's escalating nuclear threat.

CNN's Arlette Saenz joins us now from the White House.

Arlette, Biden and Yoon rolling out a new plan today. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Sara, President Biden and South Korean President Yoon will be unveiling a significant new agreement with the goal of further deterring North Korea from its nuclear ambitions. This comes as officials say North Korea has continued their provocations.

Now, this agreement will be called the Washington Declaration. And one key element of it is that they -- the U.S. plans on strategically deploying regularly strategic assets to the region to try to make that deterrence more visible. That includes the deployment of a U.S. nuclear ballistic submarine. Officials say this will be a temporary move, but it is significant is that it hasn't happened since the 1980s.

Additionally, this agreement will also set up a nuclear consultative group so that the two countries can discuss and plan for nuclear contingencies. And they will also be stepping up their training exercises and simulation activities.

Now, this comes at a time when diplomatic efforts to try to reach North Korea's Kim Jong-un to discuss these nuclear provocations have largely gone unanswered. So today President Biden and the South Korean president will be trying to focus on the goal of deterring North Korea's nuclear threat.

Additionally, there are a host of other issues the two leaders will be discussing, including economic issues and cybersecurity issues. And this all, of course, comes as China's influence in the region has been growing and President Biden has sought to really try to shore up the relationships with allies there.

Now, in a little - in just about an hour, the South Korean president will be arriving here on the South Lawn of the White House for a bit of the pomp and circumstances of this state visit. The two of them will be holding a bilateral meeting, and President Biden, and the South Korean president, will also participate in a press conference. The first time we will hear directly from President Biden since his re-election announcement just yesterday.

SIDNER: All right. Well, we can hear the band playing all the jams there at the White House. Thank you so much, Arlette Saenz.

John.

BERMAN: So, one of the roommates who survived the murders of four University of Idaho students is being asked to testify as part of the suspect's defense.

A potential germ bomb. Why the World Health Organization is sounding the alarm after a lab in Sudan was seized by paramilitary fighters.

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And an urgent manhunt underway for four detainees who escaped from a Mississippi jail. We have new details ahead.

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SIDNER: On our radar this morning, an unusual development in the murders of four college students at the University of Idaho. Lawyers for the suspect Bryan Kohberger want the victims' surviving roommate to testify at a preliminary hearing. They claim she may have exculpatory evidence. In other words, evidence that helps the suspect. It's not clear what that would be. Her attorney is pushing back against the subpoena.

A former Fox News producer who is now suing the network says she has 90 audiotapes that she made while working there. Abby Grossberg, who joined Tucker Carlson's show after the 2020 election, says there was rampant sexism. She spoke out publicly for the first time on MSNBC and also shared why she eventually quit.

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ABBY GROSSBERG, EX-FOX NEWS PRODUCER SUING THE NETWORK: I had really begun to connect the dots that the programming that we were putting on the air every night was not just generating business, but also generating hatred in the audience. And after January 6th I had this wake up moment that this is hurting people. People are getting angry. And people are acting out on that anger. And this is not OK. And I don't want to be part of that. (END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: A Fox spokesperson previously said Grossberg's lawsuit were, quote, riddled with false allegations against the network and their employees.

Montana's Republican-led house is expected to consider disciplinary action today for a transgender lawmaker. They've already refused to let Democratic State Representative Zooey Zephyr speak for a week after a heated debate over gender-affirming care. On Monday, seven people were arrested when they chanted "let her speak" inside the capitol. Zephyr says the disciplinary action could include censoring her or expelling her completely, John.

BERMAN: In Sudan this morning, new clashes threaten the fragile ceasefire as the U.S. and other nations race to get people out. This comes as CNN has learned that the National Public Health Laboratory in Khartoum was seized by one of the groups fighting.

CNN senior international correspondent Sam Kiley is in Djibouti, which is about 800 miles east of Khartoum.

Sam, let's start with this lab, and I think concerns over a germ threat.

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, there are deep concerns that the pathogens in this laboratory named by the WHO, the World Health Organization, John, as being measles, polio and cholera, could get out, particularly if there's some kind of clash in that laboratory or indeed if they -- conditions under which they're kept are compromised.

Now, these - we're not talking Covid-19. This isn't a worldwide potential catastrophe, but it is a potential extra level of horror on the already pre-existing catastrophic humanitarian situation in Sudan. Polio has almost been -- or has been eradicated in Sudan. It's trying to get its foothold back in places like Burundi, Mozambique and parts of west Africa but essentially that has been eradicated.

Cholera and measles are endemic in Sudan. And in the case of cholera, it gets a grip on a population that is vulnerable, exhausted, short of food and, above all, clean water. If you haven't got clean water access in places like Khartoum, cholera can rear its head anyway. So, if this bug were to get out, then, obviously, that would accelerate the process. I think that is the main concern there, John.

BERMAN: And, Sam, we did mention you're in Djibouti, which we showed on the map previously. It was good to see it. It is about 800 miles east of Khartoum. You are where so many of the people in Sudan are evacuating through. What is the latest on the effort to get people out?

KILEY: It's a very interesting mixed effort in many ways. This has been the military hub for U.S. operations to get people out of Sudan, but they led the field in terms of evacuating their diplomats, this is the United States, but they have only about -- under 100 were evacuated. Britain has now accelerated its evacuating process direct via Cyprus. They've run at least six flights now, several hundred people have been evacuated. The French, a similar effort. More than 2,000 people have been carried on a Saudi ship from Port Sudan to Jeddah. They're from many, many different nations and among them 500 people that got there by convoy organized by the United Nations.

The Americans, though, remaining in Sudan are being told to hide where they are because they don't -- the American authorities still don't believe that the conditions are right to continue to do an evacuation. Of course, the evacuation of 16,000 people is a massive effort potentially, John.

BERMAN: All right. Sam Kiley standing by for us in Djibouti. Keep us posted, Sam. Thank you so much.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: There's also a major announcement coming from the Biden administration right now. The Taliban has killed an ISIS-k leader. That's according to the administration. That according to the administration is the same person who planned the deadly attack on American troops and Afghan civilians at the Kabul airport during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from the country. Thirteen American soldiers, more than 170 Afghans were killed in that 2021 bombing.

John Kirby was the national security -- with the National Security Council called this ISIS-k leader the mastermind behind the horrific attack.

CNN's Natasha Bertrand, she's gathering more details on this.

And what more -- there are still quite a few questions, Natasha, about what's known and how the United States learned about it. What more are you gathering?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: That's right, Kate.

So, what we're learning this morning is that the Biden administration does believe that this plotter, this alleged plotter of the Abbey Gate suicide bombing attack in 2021 was killed by the Taliban based on U.S. intelligence.

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And what we're told, according to a Pentagon statement that was released last night, is that they do believe that this ISIS-k figure was killed in early April by the Taliban.

Now, the Pentagon, in their statement they reiterated that the U.S. had no involvement in this operation and both the White House and the Pentagon would not name the ISIS figure himself. They have declined to identify him to reporters and publicly.

But, look, the fact that the U.S. is coming out and saying at all that the Taliban carried out this operation to kill this senior ISIS leader really says a lot about the limitations of the U.S.' counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan, right, especially post withdrawal back in 2021. And actually the commander of Central Command, Erik Kurilla, he spoke to this on Capitol Hill just a few weeks ago telling lawmakers that while the U.S. does still have a broad sense of the contours of the terrorist threat that is emanating from Afghanistan and the region, those kind of granular details about specific terroristic threats including from ISIS are still really hard for the U.S. to gauge. And so that really says a lot, of course, about the U.S.' reliance now on groups like the Taliban, which, of course, the U.S. was fighting a war with for over 20 years to conduct these kinds of operations.

We should also note that CNN did speak to the father of a U.S. service member who was killed in that Abbey Gate bombing back in August of 2021, in the waning days of the U.S. evacuation, and he told CNN that while he is happy that a terrorist was killed, and that the, you know, plotter - the alleged mastermind of this operation has been eliminated and taken off the battlefield, he still wants to see someone in the Biden administration be held accountable for that massive attack that the service members and their families say was really facilitated by the chaotic withdrawal there, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Still many questions surrounding that. We're going to be speaking with John Kirby, the spokesperson for the National Security Council, a little later in the show. Many questions to pose to him on this.

Natasha, great reporting. Thank you so much.

John.

BERMAN: Thanks, Kate.

Those deep winter snows now causing significant flooding impacts. Yosemite forced to close later this week.

And we are just minutes away from the opening bell on Wall Street. Dow futures are up. Look at all the green right there. This is amid promising tech corporate earnings. Microsoft added more than 7 percent in the last quarter, beating expectations and posting a jump in revenue. The pre-market optimism comes just a day after markets closed down. Regional First Republic Bank stock plunged nearly 50 percent. That was yesterday. How that bank's record low affected the entire market. That's next.

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