Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Russia's War on Ukraine; 55 Million People Under Risk for Damaging Storms Today; Two GOP-led State Legislatures Fail to Pass Abortion Restrictions; Former Vice President Pence Testifies to Grand Jury Probing Trump and January 6th. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired April 28, 2023 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:23]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Developing this morning, major missile attacks across Ukraine, at least 19 people killed, several apartment buildings hit and reduced to rubble. CNN is on the scene in Ukraine with the very latest.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Incredible video out of Florida, destruction from a tornado that wiped out a dozen homes and damaged even more. Now some 55 million people across the southeast are bracing for more severe weather as two major storms target the region. We have the forecast.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: A major win for abortion rights in two Republican dominated states. The latest attempts to ban abortions -- ban most abortions failed, and conservative lawmakers helped stand in the way. We are following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BERMAN: This is what is left of an apartment block in Central Ukraine after a Russian rocket attack. It was part of a wave of strikes across Ukraine. In the hardest hit city of Uman, two rockets hit apartment buildings and a warehouse, killing at least 17 people. In the Dnipro the attack killed a mother and her 2-year-old child and sparked this raging fire.

I can show you on the map here where these cities are. You can see Dnipro right here where that fire was. Uman, we saw the worst of it. Kyiv, the capital, also saw some of the strikes too.

Our Nic Robertson is in Uman for us. Nic, why don't you tell us what you're seeing.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: The recovery is still going on here, intense efforts at this building behind me. The Ukraine's interior minister says he believes at the moment that this was caused by a stealth cruise missile, a Kh-101 flying at low level.

But let me get out of the way. David is going to zoom in, and you can take a look there at the firefighters. They're gathered around the first floor there. These big diggers have been pulling out rubble for hour after hour, ten hours now since the missile impacted here. They've been pulling out bodies. It appears as if they may have found another.

Now the police have been giving us an update here before. Three children among the dead here. They're working, as you see, recovering. Unfortunately, this is the death toll that we're witnessing right here, right now. We are witnessing the death toll, this horrible scene, and this apartment building here in Uman that was hit overnight very tragically by this missile, the death toll you're witnessing here climbing. But what the police and the rescue services are telling us here is that when they get cleared at the low level, they're going to move higher up.

Dave is going to tilt up now, and we're going to take a look at the collapsed apartment building up there on the eighth floor. And we have bad in -- bad news about what they may find up there. We were speaking to a lady here, her friend lived up on the eighth floor there. Her friend got out, the husband was injured, but their seven -- their 13- year-old daughter, their 7-year-old daughter are still missing, and they're feared to be up there in that building. The police say they're going to continue and keep searching through the day until they've absolutely done everything they can.

There are a lot of people standing around here, relatives, friends of people who lived in this building, desperate to know what's happened inside. We spoke to one of the first eyewitnesses on the scene. He said he got here in the early hours of this morning, about 5:00 a.m., people were asleep in their apartments. He said he could hear women and children screaming. He said they managed to pull one woman out of the rubble and get her off to hospital, but he said unfortunately she died.

And a lady in the apartment right next to us here. She told us she heard the missile coming in. She heard that whoosh. She put her kids in the bathtub. She said, put pillows and blankets on their head. She thought it was their apartment that was being hit because the whole building shook so much. She said she had no idea if they would survive or not.

Everyone here is traumatized and in shock. But the rescue and recovery operation still underway. But at the moment looking more like recovery than rescue, John.

BERMAN: And, Nic, I have to say, those images behind you, seeing the bodies carried out from this apartment building. And I just want to stress that. This is an apartment building, Nic. Any strategic value to this other than being a place where civilians live?

[09:05:05]

ROBERTSON: This building -- this apartment building, and all the apartment buildings around here, according to government records, 109 people lived in here, but there are thousands that live around here. There's nothing strategic in this building that we can see. One of the neighbors told us when she heard the whoosh of the missile, she thought it might have been an airplane flying over to, you know, around the town. But this building, these apartments, the people living here, they don't understand why it happened, John. BERMAN: No, it's the type of sight you don't attack unless you want to kill civilians because that is what is there. What a sight behind you.

Nic Robertson in Uman in Ukraine. Please keep us posted, Nic. Sara?

SIDNER: Severe storms are possible for 55 million people across the country today as extreme weather strikes. A round of tornadoes already hitting the south as flooding swamps the Midwest. Stunning images of destruction in Florida, the roof completely ripped off a home after a tornado hit just west of Tallahassee. You can also see tree after tree after tree snapped in half like toothpicks.

Let's bring in meteorologist Derek Van Dam. So the question, I guess, here is there is more to come, and soon, correct?

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. We have a severe weather threat for 50 million Americans but we're honing in on Texas for the greatest risk of hail. We recall earlier this week we had grapefruit sized hail, that is 4 inch in diameter. And this sent some cattle rushing for cover. There's damaged property. You can imagine the risk that this poses to human life just for instance, but that same setup is kind of formulating through the course of the day today.

We have the potential for severe weather across Central Texas and new to us, just within the past 15 minutes, from the Storm Prediction Center, they're extending this threat level further south from San Antonio, further south from Austin, that whole I-35 corridor. That is where we have our greatest risk of severe storms that could produce that large monster-sized hail and the potential for a tornado cannot be ruled out. Here it is, greatest probability of hail today. And look at the quarter to baseball to softball sized hail, this is off the charts large, the potential there, again, to repeat what we saw earlier in the week.

Now, we've got to talk about the other weather topic that is highlighting our weather headlines today. And that is the Mississippi River, the slow-motion disaster that continues to move downstream as we get this melt water from the epic snowfall, the record-setting snowfall across the upper Midwest. Currently 25 river gauges lining the Mississippi River with flood warnings stretching over 400 miles throughout this area as the snow continues to melt.

This is an example of just the Rock Island. This is around the Quad Cities area. We do have the cresting Mississippi River into the course of the weekend. And I believe we have a correspondent on the ground there as well. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. Derek Van Dam, thank you there.

Let's talk more about what he was just talking about, the dangers along the Mississippi. Now several parks and fields are already under water, several more homes and businesses are now under threat.

CNN's Adrienne Broaddus is live in Davenport, Iowa. Well, I can see the issue that's happening there. Tell us what you are expecting to happen as the river crests? ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, folks in this community, Sara, are taking steps to mitigate any damage. But as you can imagine as the river slowly rises, those anxiety levels also go up.

I'm standing on a crosswalk right now. It's underwater. And to give you some perspective, the light poles you see that are furthest away from me, mark the embankment of the Mississippi River in this area. And it's clearly overflowing, taking over this parking lot. This is a parking lot where we are to the right, the parking lot -- or the parking spaces under water to the left. This concert venue also submerged.

Around town, this is what we have seen. People taking those steps to mitigate any damage, filling up sandbags. This team said they started filling up sandbags on Monday.

We spoke with a business owner who's been in this community 14 years, and she says this isn't the first time they've dealt with severe flooding. Listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLAUDIA ANDERSON, BUSINESS OWNER IN IOWA: Oh, we've got 22 employees, they're hard working. I'm not -- a lot of them have been here since we opened. So it's hard. And I hope we don't lose anybody, but you never know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROADDUS: That was Claudia Anderson. Her restaurant is The Phoenix.

[09:10:01]

A lot of people know that spot here in downtown Davenport. She had to send workers home because they can't open for business because of the flooding. The sewers are backed up. So that's one area of concern for her. Plus, she's going to have to recoup her losses from shutting down her business.

Meanwhile, the river isn't expected to crest until late Sunday night or early Monday morning here. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. Thank you so much, Adrienne Broaddus. Showing us some of the damage and the potential damage that could happen. Kate?

BOLDUAN: There is another development today we want to tell you about in the fight over abortion rights that we are seeing play out across the country. Two bills in two different states, both almost completely banning abortion, and both of those moves failed, and both were in Republican-led states.

Take Nebraska for one, some people seen moved to tears. As you can see in this video here from State Senator Megan Hunt after what was being called the Heartbeat Act. It failed a critical test vote in the state legislature. That bill would have banned most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. And then in South Carolina, the five women in the State Senate, three of whom are Republicans there. They joined together to filibuster a near total ban of abortion there.

CNN's Dianne Gallagher is tracking all of these moves for us. She's joining us right now.

Dianne, what more can you tell us about what happened in South Carolina last night, and where this now heads?

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So, Kate, this isn't the first time that those five women, senators banded together in South Carolina, to effectively kill that near total ban of -- on abortion, at least for this legislative session. There was a 22-21 vote on Thursday, so just a one-vote margin, but it is the third time since the Dobbs ruling that returned that power back to the states that the Republican majority State Senate in South Carolina, which the GOP outnumbers Democrats 2-1 there. It is the third time that they have effectively blocked a near total abortion ban from the point of conception.

Look, each time it has been those five women, three Republicans, one independent, one Democrat, who've sort of led the charge. Now, of course there are male Democrat counterpoints who have joined them as well as three male Republicans yesterday, but they made impassioned speeches on the floor. And they did talk about the current climate and a potential for political backlash. But what they really tended to focus on was things like biology, and legislative priorities, and sexism, and the idea of control.

Take a listen to this from state senator, a Republican, Sandy Senn.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STATE SEN. SANDY SENN (R-SC): There is not a single thing that I can do when women such as me are insulted except to make sure that you get an earful, and you need to blame this earful on following that leader blindly off the cliff for the third time on abortion. And I'm sure you're getting on earful if you're being honest from your wives, from your children, from your grandchildren. You cannot tell me that you are not, I know you are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GALLAGHER: So right now, in both South Carolina and Nebraska abortion is legal up to about 20 to 22 weeks. South Carolina had passed a six- week abortion ban, but the state Supreme Court struck that law down earlier this year, Kate, and the State Senate passed a bill that would ban abortion at six weeks, addressing some of those changes. But the House hasn't taken it up, seemingly more focused on a near total ban from the point of conception.

BOLDUAN: So interesting, and so interesting to hear from that Republican state senator. Thank you so much, Dianne, for following this and bringing it to us. John?

BERMAN: All right. New data out just moments ago shows inflation slowing. So what does that mean for the prices that you pay?

Mike Pence under oath, the former vice president testifies for more than five hours before the grand jury investigating his former boss in the events of January 6th. We have new reporting on what he said.

And we are just minutes away from an historic spacewalk at the International Space Station. You can see the groundbreaking mission live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:18:25]

BERMAN: On the radar this morning, a tragic accident that U.S. Army base in Alaska. Officials at Fort Wainwright say three soldiers were killed and another injured when two Apache helicopters collided during training. The names have not been released as the military works to notify the families. But we know the injured soldier is still being treated at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital. The crash is under investigation.

Three suspects accused of killing a 20-year-old Colorado woman when they threw a large rock at her car, appeared in court for the first time. Police say the teenage boys threw landscaping rocks at multiple cars on the night of April 19th.

One rock went through Alexa Bartell's windshield and killed her as she was talking on the phone with a friend. A court affidavit says the suspects told investigators they had thrown objects at cars at least 10 different times this year and would be, quote, "excited when they hit something." They have not yet entered a plea.

Cigarette smoking in the U.S. has fallen to a historic low in a new survey by the CDC, only 11 percent of adults say they are smokers. The use of e-cigarettes is climbing. It is now nearly 6 percent of the population, up from 4.9 percent the year before. Sara?

SIDNER: This morning, new key economic data just released that could be critical as the Fed meets next week to decide if they will raise interest rates yet again.

CNN's Christine Romans is here with more on that.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

SIDNER: Good morning. What do the numbers look like? What's going to happen?

ROMANS: So we're seeing inflation cooling. In this trend, I think is pretty well established at this point. When you look at inflation up 4.2 percent, this is consumer inflation, it's the PCE index. This is the one the Fed likes to watch.

[09:20:01]

SIDNER: Right. ROMANS: 4.2 percent, that's the slowest in almost two years. Still, higher than the Fed would like, but the slowest in two years.

And when I look from February to March, only up 0.1 percent, prices only up 0.1 percent. That is, Sara, a more normal number. And we've seen a couple of years of anything but normal in the inflation story, so that number in particular, I like what I see.

Also, there's a report out, a companion report with this that showed employee costs, so wages, --

SIDNER: Yes.

ROMANS: -- up in the first quarter.

SIDNER: Oh.

ROMANS: So while inflation is cooling overall, wages are still rising. So I think it's all important data as we talk about the Fed and its campaign to cool inflation. This headline number would suggest that the Feds' -- the Feds' medicine is working.

SIDNER: OK. So this is more normal. What is not normal is what is happening with First Republic Bank.

ROMANS: Yes.

SIDNER: What is going on? Is that -- the possibility we're going to see another bank failure?

ROMANS: So First Republic is quite literally fighting for its survival right now. I mean, we learned earlier this week that $100 billion walked out the door after that banking crisis in March. So $100 billion of deposits went someplace else and that has left this bank in -- in real trouble here.

The stock cut in half this week. It's down 95 percent from its peak. Now it's up a little bit in pre-market trading. And one of the reasons why, I think, is because there's a lot of speculation about what are the strategic possibilities for this bank. Will it be bought by someone else? Will the FDIC have to come in and take it over? We know that the government have said they have all kinds of tools to make sure that your deposits are safe and guaranteed.

So watching this -- this bank to see what happens today, also we're going to be getting really critical post mortem from the Fed about what went wrong last month with those two banks that failed. That comes out at 11:00 Eastern.

SIDNER: I have a feeling it's going to be big. I'll let you read it and then we'll bring you back on.

ROMANS: OK.

SIDNER: And we'll get all the details.

ROMANS: It's a deal. It's a deal.

SIDNER: John?

BERMAN: All right. Thank you so much.

So we are getting new details this morning about the unprecedented testimony from former Vice President Mike Pence. He appeared for five hours before a federal grand jury investigating Donald Trump's actions surrounding January 6th.

Trump had tried to block Pence from testifying four times. Pence has publicly denounced Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But this is the first time he spoke under oath about his direct conversations with the president he served beside.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz is with us now. So, Katelyn, the big question is, what did Mike Pence say? What do we know about his testimony?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: John, that's a pretty big question. It's five hours of testimony that we know Mike Pence sat for. He would have been answering questions of the grand jurors and the prosecutors in federal court in that secret proceeding.

We don't know exactly what they asked and what he said at this point. But everything we've learned about this situation, his subpoena, the court fight over it, all of it points to a large part of it being about Donald Trump. What Donald Trump didn't want him to testify to, and that the court ordered he must is about their directive conversations, things that Trump wanted to protect as secret.

And we also know that there was a judge who looked at this. Looked at the possibility of Pence testifying in this as the vice president who was presiding over that activity on Capitol Hill on January 6th. And that judge said that he would have to speak to the grand jury under oath about conversations where Donald Trump may have been acting corruptly.

So that is very clearly something the Justice Department may have wanted to ask him about. All of that said, Pence's team has not divulged even publicly that he testified yesterday. One of his top advisers, Marc Short, did an interview on NewsNation in the afternoon just after this story came out that he had been in court all day. Here's Marc.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARC SHORT, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF TO MIKE PENCE: I think that the vice president, you know, had his own case based on speech and debate clause, was pleased that for the first time, a judge acknowledged it, applied to the vice president of the United States. But he was willing to comply with the law, and the courts have -- have ordered him to testify.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

POLANTZ: So we're going to keep pushing to see exactly how significant what Pence said may be and what exactly he said. But at this point, it will be up to the prosecutors to determine if what he testified to, what was said in that grand jury yesterday could be used in a possible criminal case. John?

BERMAN: All right. Katelyn Polantz, thank you so much. So much we don't know. What we do know, Kate, it's all unprecedented.

BOLDUAN: That's exactly -- that's exactly right, John.

Joining me now or us now for more on this is CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, Elliot Williams. So, Elliot, we do not know what was asked or what was said in that room. He testified for five hours. But if you were in the room, what are the most pressing questions you would ask, what can Pence provide?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Oh, I think the most important question Pence can provide, did former President Trump ever explicitly say or imply that he knew that he lost the election? Because any number of crimes that might be investigated by the special counsel will, you know, sort of hinge on that fact, what was the president's level of knowledge.

[09:25:02]

Then if you're asking Mike Pence questions it's, you know, number one, what pressure did you perceive or feel throughout this period from the president? Did he ever try to direct you to take any action on January 6th? What other conversations did you hear? What conversations did you hear with the president and other people? So there's plenty, and I'm sure that five hours went by pretty quickly because the amount of matters that they had to talk about with him.

BOLDUAN: Mike Pence did have a partial win, if you will, in terms of what -- when he was appealing and what he would testify to. The judge overseeing the grand jury ruled he would not have to talk about matters that are linked to his role as being president of the Senate on January 6th. So then what line of questioning was then off limits in that room yesterday?

WILLIAMS: Sure. Well, and I guess this is one of the things we're not going to know about because he probably had to consult with his attorneys about it through the day if they ever stepped up close to the line. The vice president is the president of the Senate, and sort of treated as a congressional officer. He would not have to testify about things that he did on that day in that role, or maybe in preparation for it.

Now, Kate, the problems, there are probably some gray areas that exist over where Mike Pence, just the vice president talking to the president, and Mike Pence the -- the head of the U.S. Senate sort of collide and I'm sure they probable had to hash some of that out yesterday as they did in court.

BOLDUAN: Yes, absolutely. So this is unprecedented, this is the first time in modern history, a vice president has been compelled to testify about the president he has served with. I'm sure you have kind of wondered this, and it's unknowable in this exact moment, so you know, give us some more time and some more history to really see if this has had an impact. But do you think this move, now this precedent that this now sets, that this -- this somehow changes the role of a vice president, or changes the relationship between a VP and a president going forward?

WILLIAMS: I don't think it does. I mean, I think what it does is it reaffirms the notion that at a certain point, even people at the highest levels of government still have to subject themselves to the criminal justice system. And I think you saw glimmers of this in the context of Richard Nixon back in the 1970s, but you're seeing it again here that certainly, Mike Pence is critical and important, but he was the vice president of the United States. But also right now, as a witness and could provide valuable evidence or information to the Justice Department, I think, and a reaffirmation of that point is the big takeaway, I think, Kate, from all of this.

BOLDUAN: It's great to see you, Elliot. Thank you.

WILLIAMS: Thanks.

BOLDUAN: Sara?

SIDNER: Still to come, political announcement that has the potential to shift the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. We will explain.

Also, under review, the Pentagon now looking into how it vets security clearances as we learn new details about the suspected Pentagon leaker, including the Russian paraphernalia found hanging inside his bedroom.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)