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Search And Rescue Underway For Missing Titanic Tourist Submersible; WAPO: FBI Delayed Opening Probe Into Donald Trump's January 6 Role More Than A Year; Blinken: We Made Progress With China, But "A Lot More Work To Do"; Holiday Weekend Marred By Mass Shooting. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired June 19, 2023 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:00:19]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: Urgent search and rescue operations are underway off the Canadian Coast after a submersible that takes people to see the wreckage of the Titanic has gone missing. It's not clear how many people are on board, time though is running out.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Plus, a new report finds that the Justice Department slow walked its investigation of former President Donald Trump and those in his inner circle after they attempted to steal the 2020 election. We're going to take a closer look as to why.

KEILAR: And the high-stakes meeting in Beijing between Secretary of State Tony Blinken and China's President. We'll have details on what was discussed behind closed doors. But now the question is where do tensions between the two superpowers go from here.

We are following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SCIUTTO: We begin deep in the Atlantic Ocean where an urgent search and rescue operation is now underway for a missing submersible operated by a company that handles expeditions to the Titanic wreckage off the coast of Canada. We are learning now that five people are on board the missing sub, that according to the U.S. Coast Guard. We also have new pictures of the sub before it was launched on Sunday.

There it is there in the water. You could see flotation device several of them around the edges on the ocean. The pictures were posted on a dive participant's Instagram page with the caption "had a successful launch and currently diving."

Right now Coast Guard officials are racing to find the missing crew members before - and this is crucial, of course, their oxygen and power run out.

CNN Anchor and International Correspondent, Paula Newton, joins us now live from Ottawa with details.

Paula, I mean, the difficulty of this, right, 2.4 miles deep. That's how far down the Titanic is. Do we know the status of the search? Do we know the size of the search area?

PAULA NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We certainly know the size of the search area, it is a quite large while they're searching in the vicinity of the Titanic wreck and that is about 400, almost 400 miles off the southeast coast of St. John's, Newfoundland. The problem, Jim, is that when they lost communication with that submersible, they have no idea. They lost communication with it for about two hours as we know and then the longer time went on then they reported it to the U.S. Coast Guard.

SCIUTTO: Wow.

NEWTON: It's been missing now for about 24 hours and according to the Coast Guard - the U.S. Coast Guard that's leading the search and rescue because it is technically in American waters. They continue to search with now three assets on scene. What's interesting here is the fact that Canada and that is specifically the Halifax research coordination and rescue center has sent up a P-8 Poseidon. And what can that do?

That can look from the air to look for a submersible in the seabed.

But as you just pointed out, Jim, what is so difficult is the depth. They have no way of knowing if they were on their way back up and lost communication or if they were somewhere in the depths of this wreckage, which as you say is almost 2.5 miles beneath the ocean.

We need to say here that they do have about four days, 96 hours of oxygen and fuel, things that will protect them as the search continues, but obviously it's incredibly difficult. It could just be a communication problem at this point in time. The other thing that they are looking for is the weather which will impact the search and rescue obviously.

But again, three assets the U.S. Coast Guard says is on the scene right now, more to come. And I should also say that they continue to pool expertise from all over the world, Jim. That issue here is that this kind of deep sea rescue is incredibly difficult, even if they locate them. If they can't come to the surface, then the issue is how you get them to the surface and that's what the U.S. Coast Guard is working on right now.

SCIUTTO: And that crucial two hours there gives you time to - well - perhaps get farther away, expands that search area.

Paula Newton in Ottawa, thanks so much.

We're going to go live to the Pentagon now where Oren Liebermann keeping track of U.S. Coast Guard efforts there.

And Oren, it struck me there that the P-8 Poseidon, that's of course an aircraft used to look for submarines, right, the assets it would have on board to look for something underwater certainly formidable. Can you describe what assets are out there and what capabilities they have? OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Of course, this search effort right now is a joint us Canadian effort. The U.S. has a C-130 Hercules that's searching.

[15:05:03]

That's a four engine aircraft that can be used for long range patrols and that likely is able to stay in the air for a long time and search the surface of the water to see if there is any evidence there to see if the submersible itself surfaced at some point, but that would be what the U.S. Coast Guard would use to search over are a large body of water and likely to search from the surface.

The Canadians as you point out have a P-8 Poseidon. That's used to search underwater using a number of different ways to search underwater, either it can drop acoustic buoys and listen for sound or it has other methods of searching underwater. But its specialty, its mission is to find submersibles, submarines underwater. Obviously it is a military aircraft, so it is most often used to search for enemy submarines.

This a bit different as it looks for this civilian submersible. Also, the challenge perhaps much smaller than you would expect a military submarine to be, so that adds to the difficulty of the mission.

And then a Canadian Coast Guard vessel is on the way as well. I searched a short while ago on marinetraffic.com. It is heading for the area at about 15 knots, so that's 17 or 18 miles an hour that will take quite some time to get there.

The challenge is piling up, Jim, when you talk about what it will take here in this search and rescue effort.

SCIUTTO: Well, the P-8 designed to look for submersibles that don't want to be found, right? It perhaps gives some advantages here in terms of searching underwater, particularly at those depths.

Oren at the Pentagon, thanks so much.

We also have CNN Correspondent, Tom Foreman, here in D.C.

Tom, I wonder, as we're looking at this here, what's the difference so we understand it between a submersible and a submarine?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They're all submarines. But submersibles are a particular type of submarine and that will speak to what both Paula and Oren just mentioned about why this is difficult to do.

If you think about a submarine, it's a big vessel. It's meant to be underwater for a long period of time to support a crew of hundred, 130 different people. That's what we see with military submarines.

And in truth, they don't tend to operate that deep in the water, maybe two tenths of a mile, under a quarter mile in any event. So if you're looking for military subs, they're fairly close to the surface. Submersibles - and there are robotically operated ones, there are those that are autonomous that operate on their own. But a human submersible like this goes much, much, much, much, much deeper. And yes, it's a much smaller profile vessel.

It's only meant to be down for a limited period of time compared to a submarine, which we've been around for a very long period of time. It only supports a limited number of people on board. And although it has very good movement horizontally and the ability to come up and down, that's - it's limited scope here.

So think of it this way, imagine if you had a very, very, very tall building and you were searching for something in the top few floors of it, that's where you're looking for a submarine as we normally think of a submarine.

When you talk about a submersible, you would have to go down through all the floors all the way to the bottom to maybe find that submersible. That's a difference in depth. And as you can even see in these pictures much, much smaller.

So the chief difference is a submarine can stay down a long time and support a whole lot of people and it stays relatively close to the surface. A submersible can go very, very deep, with very few people on board and it's a small target to look for in a great big ocean.

SCIUTTO: Can you just - you may not know the answer to this, forgive me if you don't, but would they have a transponder, right, something that would send out a signal to alert its position or is it passive? In other words, you got to find it yourself?

FOREMAN: I don't know.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

FOREMAN: I don't know. I know there's communications very often. But as - again, as Paula and Oren and you have pointed out at this depth over this difference, this is very, very difficult to deal with. One way of thinking about it that I think is really important, think of the deep ocean as you would space but worse.

SCIUTTO: Mm-hm.

FOREMAN: I mean, arguably, there have been fewer people to the deep ocean that have been to space ...

SCIUTTO: Yep.

FOREMAN: ... because the deep ocean is a very, very forbidding environment where everything, communications, air, water, rescue, all of that is difficult, extremely difficult. So that's what they're facing now.

SCIUTTO: Yes, they often say the bottom of the ocean is less explored than outer space.

Tom Foreman in Washington, of course we're going to continue to follow.

We do have an update, the U.S. Coast Guard just tweeted that contact with the vessel was lost about one hour and 45 minutes into its dive. We continue to dig in on this. We're going to bring you more as we get it, certainly Boris, an urgent search here of very large area but lots of assets headed that way right now.

SANCHEZ: Every minute counts in that search. We're going to stay on top of it, just as you said, Jim.

We're also tracking another major headline this afternoon, a new investigation by the Washington Post revealing that the FBI twice - twice canceled plans to launch a formal investigation into Donald Trump's role on January 6th. That means they waited more than a year to investigate the White House-led efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

[15:10:01]

The Post reports that the Justice Department and the Bureau were slow to act because they didn't want to appear partisan and there was debate among prosecutors about how much evidence was needed to probe Trump's actions.

With us now, CNN Legal Analyst and former federal prosecutor, Elliot Williams. We're also joined by CNN Reporter Alayna Treene. Thank you both for being with us.

Elliot, right away, your response to the news that they waited more than a year to open this investigation.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. I would say welcome to the world of putting investigations together, Boris, because it can take a very long time to, number one, build cases, but also, two, dot the Is and cross the Ts. This is the kind of investigation that you cannot get wrong.

Now, look, anytime you're going after somebody criminally, certainly prosecutors and investigators want to make sure they're correct. When you're investigating the former president of the United States with all kinds of other considerations, such as his free speech rights and so on, you just got to make sure you're getting it right.

And so I'm not really surprised that things played out over a period of months or even a year.

SANCHEZ: Alayna, something I found interesting in the piece was that this wasn't one official that was sort of outlining the strategy, there seemed to be a consensus among a number of top prosecutors.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Right. Well, I mean, it's interesting, as the Post laid out one of the main goals was to not appear partisan. And, of course, as we've seen over, particularly the last few days and weeks, but also the past several months. The Donald Trump administration or former administration of Donald Trump and his team and other Republicans on Capitol Hill and elsewhere are still painting it as such.

And even though that there's a lot of attention right now on his most recent indictment regarding the classified documents the case, I think the thing that I know Donald Trump's team is preparing for and is also concerned about is will there be an indictment in the January 6 case in Georgia. And we're told that that could happen, potentially, in August.

And so I think we'll probably start to learn more about what's happening behind the scenes with that in the coming weeks. But it's - I think this reporting is very interesting. And also the fact that one of the reasons they did this was to remain not appear partisan and yet they're still being painted as such.

SANCHEZ: They're being attack for that anyway. Elliot, in your experience, does that kind of delay in this context - could that potentially hinder the gathering of evidence?

WILLIAMS: There's - that's an excellent question, Boris, because number one, memories fade. And number two, evidence gets stale and certainly taking a year from any sort of criminal activity can hurt an investigation now.

Again, there's a reason to proceed with caution and there's a reason to make sure things are lined up. And correct, however you're going to have better evidence closer in time to the events that you're investigating and that might hurt the Justice Department here.

SANCHEZ: And Alayna, on the Trump front, I want to play some sound for our viewers of two former officials in his administration, his former secretary of defense and his former attorney general, being pretty critical about his handling of classified documents, watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Do you think Trump can be trusted with the nation's secrets ever again?

MARK ESPER, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: Well, based on his actions, again, if proven true, under the indictment by the Special Counsel, no. I mean, it's just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation's security risks.

BILL BARR, FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL: He will always put his own interests and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country's interests. There's no question about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAMS: This to me goes to the point you were making previously in a way, because these were two officials that were not seen as partisan, but yet they're being painted that way now.

TREENE: Right. Well, I mean, these comments from both Mark Esper and Bill Barr are very striking and they're also very different than what we've been hearing from many within the Republican Party, both leaders on Capitol Hill, but also Donald Trump's 2024 presidential rivals.

And I think one really important thing to note here is that both Esper and Barr were not just Trump administration officials, they were cabinet level members of his administration, and they had access to a lot of the classified materials and sensitive materials that Donald Trump had.

And I think that both of them over the weekend, and I know Bill Barr, he's been on the air for several days now talking about this indictment, very critical of Donald Trump and also warning about what a potential 2024 return to the White House could be for Donald Trump and arguing that they don't think that he should be trusted with the nation's secrets. And so those are very damning comments from Mark Esper and Bill Barr there.

SANCHEZ: And yet both of them being painted as traitors by those folks who defended them not that long ago.

Alayna Treene, Elliot Williams, thanks so much for the insights.

TREENE: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Brianna?

KEILAR: A potential step in the right direction, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken as seen here departing Beijing this morning. He's heading back to the U.S. after a quick stop in London to brief President Biden after high-stakes meetings with top Chinese officials. And that includes a brief meeting this morning with President Xi.

As tensions between the two nations continue to be at an all time high, both sides are touting some progress but key sticking points remain.

[15:15:00]

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ANTONY BLINKEN, UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF STATE: Very candid, very in depth and, in places, constructive and in other places we have a lot more work to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: CNN National Security Correspondent, Kylie Atwood, is live in Beijing on this.

Okay. So decipher that diplo speak for us, so how did this go?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Well, listen, I think the Biden administration is actually feeling pretty good coming out of these two days of meetings, because what they got the Chinese to agree to was the need to stabilize the relationship. And that was really the key motivation going into these two days of meetings for the Secretary of State, can the U.S. and China get in the same room and really have a real honest dialogue face-to-face about the issues, the challenges at play in the relationship between these two superpowers.

Now, when it comes to progress, the Secretary of State said there was progress on some fronts. When it comes to the fentanyl issue, the synthetic opioid issue in the United States, it really affects Americans. It's a major killer of Americans, ages 18 through 49.

There was agreement between the U.S. and China to stand up a working group to address that issue, because a lot of the inputs for fentanyl actually come from precursor chemicals that are produced in China, so that's significant.

But what the Secretary also said, Brianna, is that progress takes time and that these two days weren't going to be some salve to all of these issues between the two nations. One of the major issues that the Secretary set out to address was trying to stand up regular military to military channels of communication between the two countries and the Chinese did not agree to that.

So the fact that they didn't make that agreement, that's a challenge for the Secretary heading back to Washington. He said that he raised it multiple times in his meetings. And that is something that the U.S. is going to continue to push China on.

Now, when it comes to Taiwan, it's clear that there are remaining tensions between the U.S. and China really unsurprisingly. We heard from the Chinese Foreign Ministry read out of one of the meetings that they made demands of the U.S. when it comes to Taiwan, they said it presents the most pronounced risk to the U.S.-China relationship.

And the Secretary of State basically said that the U.S. position on Taiwan remains the same. Here's what he said in the press conference earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BLINKEN: We do not support Taiwan's independence. We make clear that we oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo by either side. We've been clear and consistent in our policy. At the same time, we and many others have deep concerns about some of the provocative actions that China has taken in recent years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ATWOOD: Now, what's clear is that this meeting - these two days of meetings are going to launch continued engagements between the U.S. and China. The Secretary said the expectation is that senior administration. Officials are going to travel to Beijing from the United States in the coming weeks. He also invited the Chinese foreign minister for to visit Washington. We don't have a date for that, but the foreign minister did accept that invitation.

KEILAR: All right. Steps in the right direction perhaps here.

Kylie, thank you for that report from Beijing. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Well, sadly a violent - deadly weekend in multiple cities in the U.S., gunfire interrupts a Juneteenth celebration in a music festival. What we're learning is police continue searching for suspects in at least one case.

And new video showing a tank filled with explosives blowing up in Ukraine. Is this Russia's new tactic on the battlefield? We're going to have much more on the significance of that ahead here on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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[15:23:02]

SCIUTTO: A rash of mass shootings leaving Americans, once again, stunned and horrified as celebrations in - devolved into chaos over the holiday weekend such as this one. Police still searching for an unknown number of suspects after one person was killed. 22 injured during a Juneteenth celebration this in Willowbrook, Illinois just near Chicago.

Several teenagers were shot during a party in Downtown St. Louis, a 17-year-old died there. Nine other teens were hurt. Police say a 17- year-old suspect is in custody.

And more terrifying moments at a musical Festival in Washington State. Police say a gunman killed two people, injured at least two others as police chased him down. He's - they say he began firing randomly into the crowd before he was arrested.

CNN's Josh Campbell joins us now.

Josh, we've asked you to do this before but give us a catalogue of the violence we saw in the last couple of days.

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim. Listen, I mean, as if we needed further proof that this epidemic of gun violence continues to ravage this country. Just look at this past weekend alone. Some of these major incidents in the Chicago, area a man hunt continues at this hour after two groups of people over the weekend appear to have opened fire on each other killing one person but injuring 22 people, 22 injuries. In and that incident, dozens of ambulances rushed to that scene trying to get the wounded to area hospitals.

We also know over the weekend in Washington State, a mass shooting happened at a music festival after a man opened fire. Two people were killed there. He was eventually taken into custody.

And in Pennsylvania, two state troopers were shot, one of them fatally, after this multi-scene shooting where a gunman began by opening fire at a police station, continuing through a residential area. He was eventually confronted by law enforcement officers. He died in that shootout.

It's worth pointing out, Jim, that in all of those incidents that I just mentioned, the motive remains under investigation.

[15:25:01]

SCIUTTO: So we have another year where there have been more mass shootings than days so far in 2023. Tell us what the numbers show us.

CAMPBELL: No, that's right. I mean, this past weekend alone, Jim, we're talking about 15 mass shootings in this country, that brings the total this year to 315 mass shootings, more mass shootings than days, we continue to say that.

But it's worth pointing out that this epidemic doesn't appear to be abating anytime soon. You look at the number of gun violence deaths in this country. This year alone, we're talking about nearly 20,000 people killed, nearly 17,000 have been injured in the shootings.

And, of course, we talked about numbers, but these are people that are going about their lives this weekend at Juneteenth celebrations and Father's Day events, just going out to a music festival. Those - all those people impacted by gun violence.

It's worth pointing out also, finally, Jim, that the CDC says that the number one killer of children in this country remains firearms. It's certainly a very serious problem, no end in sight.

SCIUTTO: And remind us how CNN defines mass shootings.

CAMPBELL: So we're talking about four people that were shot, not including the gunman. This is according to the gun violence archives. And it's so interesting, I talked to journalists in foreign countries and - who covered the United States and they say that the goalposts continues to shift because we've seen these mass shootings, some outlets overseas won't even cover a mass shooting in the United States unless you're getting into double digits.

Of course, we here continue to focus on the problem. We're not going to shift the goalposts but it's certainly very serious, lives continue to be impacted by this,.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And the numbness extends beyond our borders. Josh Campbell in Los Angeles, thanks so much. Brianna?

KEILAR: Russia and Ukraine, both claiming some successes as fierce fighting rages on. President Zelenskyy says the most intense combat is happening on the southern front and we're going to take you there.

Plus, AI has proved it can do a lot of things but can it win a Grammy? Ahead, what the award show is now saying about artificial intelligence.