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Banging Sounds Heard in Search for Missing Sub; Manhattan DA Issues New Subpoenas in Trump Hush Money Case; Hunter Biden to Avoid Jail Time in Plea Deal with DOJ. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired June 21, 2023 - 11:00   ET

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

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KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: About 72 hours in and running out of oxygen. Search teams may have just hours left to find and rescue the people on board that missing sub and the U.S. military is now trying to speed new assets to the search areas as fast as they can.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: A consistent banging noise heard every 30 minutes and rescue crews say it lasted for hours.

So what could that mean?

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: And if the submersible is finally found, getting it to the surface can take half a day. New reporting on how they plan to do it. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BOLDUAN: This just in, the U.S. Coast Guard is set to hold another update in a couple of hours on the continued effort to find the missing OceanGate sub near the wreckage of the Titanic. CNN will bring that to you at 1:00 pm Eastern.

One key area of interest is the banging sounds picked up by rescuers overnight, bringing some hope that the five people on board the vessel may still be alive. The underwater noises are being described as being consistent in 30-minute intervals. And I spoke to an ocean explorer, who is a friend of one of the people missing.

Tom Dettweiler told us this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM DETTWEILER, OCEAN EXPLORER: The banging sounds are interesting because knowing PH Nargeolet and his experience with submersibles and his background in submarines, this is exactly how he would try to indicate that they were still alive and try to communicate with the surface.

He would do some banging; he would do it on a regular schedule so that it was distinguishable from the background noises that are in the ocean all the time.

BOLDUAN: Is that, you think, PH would be improvising or is this some sort of, I don't know, standard protocol or procedure that you're familiar of when it comes to underwater emergencies?

DETTWEILER: It is a standard protocol for contacting any sort of rescue service that might be coming your way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Now CNN's Miguel Marquez has the very latest from Newfoundland on the search effort.

Miguel, what is the latest that you're hearing on these sounds detected?

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: They haven't -- as far as we know and maybe we'll hear more at 1 o'clock but these sounds were heard yesterday for about a four-hour period.

A Poseidon aircraft put buoys in the ocean and they picked up those sounds. Another aircraft put buoys in sometime later and they also heard sounds. And it was the consistency that caught their attention, every half hour, sounded like banging.

As the day went on, though, they heard noises coming from the same area but it wasn't described as banging. They're not quite sure what it was. Here's how the admiral of the Coast Guard described those sounds.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REAR ADM. JOHN MAUGER, U.S. COAST GUARD: There is a lot of metal and different objects in the water around this site. That's why it is so important that we've engaged experts from the Navy that understand the science behind noise and can classify or give us better information about what the source of that noise might be.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUEZ: So they sent that data to the U.S. Navy, who will further study it and try to figure out exactly what it was, if they can distinguish it from other ships or things that might be in the area.

They moved ships to the area where the sound seemed to be coming from. They put remote operating vehicles to see if they can spot whatever it was that was making that sound and it turned up nothing.

So they widened out the search area and are moving more resources in. Another Canadian Coast Guard ship left this morning, the Horizon Arctic, that seems to be carrying the gear from three different U.S. military planes, C-17s, very large cargo planes for the military.

That landed here at St. John's and that left very early this morning. And it does take about a day to get there. So the ships on the way with even more gear. But just hoping, hoping that whoever those individuals that are in that submersible are alive and they can be brought back to the surface A-OK. Back to you.

BOLDUAN: Yes. Some of the video that you shot this morning of the ship heading out. The key is how remote the area is where they need to get, how quickly they can get there and then getting in the water. That is showing the challenges ahead of them and you're seeing it play out firsthand in real time. Thank you so much, Miguel.

SIDNER: With multiple agencies involved, the U.S. military is moving its assets to help with search efforts. CNN's Natasha Bertrand is joining us now.

What can you tell us about what these vessels can do?

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NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Sara. So three new vessels have arrived on the scene, including one that has side- scanning sonar capabilities. And according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that allows the vessels to map the sea floor and try to basically send and receive acoustic pulses that can help map the sea floor or detect objects really, really far, deep down in the ocean.

And so what we're seeing right now is obviously an effort to figure out where this vessel might be. And it is an all hands on deck effort. A number of agencies, multiple different entities with the Department of Defense, are helping out with this effort, including the Navy, the New York Air National Guard and Transportation Command.

And Canadian and U.S. planes are conducting flyovers. This is not just an American effort but an international effort. You have Canadian and American planes. You have a French deep sea diving vessel that is mapping the sea floor, trying to figure out whether they can detect anything.

And the Navy has provided a flyaway deep ocean salvage system which is essentially a portable system that can lift large, bulky and heavy objects weighing up to 60,000 pounds off of the ocean floor. That will be necessary if they find the submarine.

They're still trying to figure out where exactly it is. And at this point they are employing all these different capabilities to figure out where it is and how they can recover the vessel from such depths once they do find it.

We should note that the Navy has also been in touch with the Coast Guard about those banging sounds. The Coast Guard says that they're trying to employ Navy experts to try to figure out what those might be, because the Navy has that scientific expertise to figure out what they might be and where they might be coming from, Sara.

SIDNER: Natasha Bertrand, thank you very much.

John, not just trying to find it but trying to recover it will be a huge mission.

BERMAN: That will be very complicated, even if they get that lucky. With us now, expert diver and diving instructor, Barry Lipsky. He currently leads the Long Island Divers Association. Barry, great to have you here. Look, these five people are trapped

inside the sub. There's a search going on going to now. Hopefully, they are still conscious and able to do thing.

How could they help themselves if they were in the sub and still alert right now?

BARRY LIPSKY, EXPERT DIVER AND DIVING INSTRUCTOR: The passengers inside the sub, obviously, there's a very limited amount of oxygen that's there for their capabilities.

And they need to stay calm, reduce their breathing and just wait for help because, from inside there, there's really nothing they can do, except for possibly with what we're possibly hearing right now is the banging on the side of the sub, which those sonobuoys will pick up.

If they are making that kind of a noise, the sonobuoys will pick that up and that way they can possibly locate this sub in time before the oxygen runs out.

BERMAN: Certainly it is the best way to make themselves known and stay calm. I know that's easy to say. It's got to be so hard to do in this type of situation.

LIPSKY: Absolutely. The water temperature is probably between 38 and 40 degrees. It's 28 and 30 degrees. It's very, very cold. There is no heat inside this sub, as far as I know. So they've been down there for a few days. There's no heat and the temperature outside is coming up inside the sub and they're probably freezing.

BERMAN: They've got to be very uncomfortable there.

LIPSKY: Yes. There's no real bathroom facilities, they have the temperature to deal with. They probably don't have any food because they were expected to come back from about eight hours from the time they started the descent. So it's not a very good situation.

BERMAN: What complicates this search effort?

What makes it so hard to find a sub like this?

LIPSKY: Well, you're in waters that are very, very deep, obviously, everybody knows. They were down 12,500 feet. Divers typical don't go down more than about 100 feet. So the water temperatures, as we mentioned, very, very cold.

And you're going out there as rescue personnel in waters that are affected by currents that are very strong. You've got winds. You've got waves. All these conditions that you would expect in the North Atlantic, very, very far from any other land source.

So the rescuers themselves have their own anxiety that they need to contend with and, at the same time, stay very focused and keep their morale high so they could do the job of which they're trying to do.

BERMAN: And visibility is next to nothing down there and you're basically counting on the sonar, your best tool to identify any location, yes?

LIPSKY: Yes. As a diver doing rescue diving, when we go into the areas where we have to go, which are not anytime ever good, we call it blacker than the darkest thing you could possibly imagine.

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BERMAN: I know you know people involved in the search and rescue effort. You've been putting a lot of thinking into this.

Do you have any idea what might have happened to this sub?

LIPSKY: Plenty of experts talking about that. But it will not be a lot of things that could have possibly gone wrong. They lost communication within less than two hours. So it was probably either still descending or it was on the bottom. So there's the great possibility of entanglement.

But then why don't we hear from them?

Was the antenna knocked off?

How come they can't communicate?

Was the electrical flooded and prevented any kind of signaling to take place again?

And then where are all the buoys and so forth that are attached to the sub?

They're supposed to come up. They're supposed to come up with the sub. But they haven't come up without the sub, either, that we know about.

So where is the sub?

Is it there?

Is it midwater?

Is it at the surface?

If the currents are running six to eight knots, which they do very usually around that area, that's 600 to 800 feet per minute they're traveling, which means they're hundreds and hundreds of miles from the Titanic as we are here today.

BERMAN: Look, these are all questions that are being asked, after hopefully there is some miracle. Barry Lipsky, great to see you here. Thank you so much for answering these questions.

LIPSKY: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Coming up, new subpoenas have now been issued in the hush money criminal case involving Donald Trump. Why New York prosecutors now want the videotape deposition from a totally separate case involving the former president. Plus the alleged Pentagon leaker is set to be arraigned today on a

handful of criminal charges. More on what could be coming in court. That's next.

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SIDNER: The Manhattan district attorney investigating Donald Trump over alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels is after more evidence in that case. And he's trying to get it by subpoenaing a video deposition Donald Trump did in a completely separate case.

The DA wants Trump's full deposition taken during E. Jean Carroll's defamation and sexual abuse civil trial. They are also asking for some emails between the Trump Organization and White House employees.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts that is related to this case. CNN's Kara Scannell is joining us now.

Kara, what can you tell us about the fact that they're now going after this video?

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Sara, in this we learned this through a court filing yesterday. The DA's office has subpoenaed E. Jean Carroll's attorney, saying they want the full videotaped deposition from the former president.

That's 79 of 209 pages of the transcript was played during the defamation trial. Prosecutors say they want the whole thing, including exhibits, in part because it shows how Trump dealt with allegations of sexual misconduct ahead of the 2020 election.

The key issue in this case are his payments that prosecutors say were made to silence Stormy Daniels and then the crime, they say, was the cover-up, falsifying business records.

They're also subpoenaing the Trump Organization for more information. They want these emails between any employees of the Trump Organization and the White House from January 20, 2017, Inauguration Day, through the end of that year.

That time period is crucial because that is when these reimbursement checks were made. They want to establish how much -- or how involved Trump was when he was at the White House in his personal business.

And they've also asked for any severance and non-disclosure agreements between the Trump Organization and a number of people, including Hope Hicks and Ivanka Trump and they want emails between Trump's longtime assistant and Melania Trump, his wife.

They want to establish meetings and travel that he was involved with during a two-year period.

SIDNER: A heck of a lot of information they're going after in this case. Donald Trump has asked for the judge to recuse himself in the case.

What is the Manhattan district attorney's office saying about that?

SCANNELL: Right. Trump wants that judge recused because his daughter had briefly worked for a political organization that did work with Democrats, including the Vice President Kamala Harris.

He also, the judge, had made $35 in donations, including some of that money going to Biden. So these are the issues that Trump has raised. The DA is saying that a recusal here is not necessary.

This is part of Trump's history of making baseless allegations of bias in judges overseeing his case.

And in the court filing they say, "Recusal would facilitate an apparent effort by defendant to select his own judge and would encourage other litigants to adopt the same approach."

Trump is still trying to move this from state court into federal court and a hearing on that is set for next week.

SIDNER: Kara Scannell, I know you will be all over it. Appreciate your reporting.

BOLDUAN: Joining us on this is former federal prosecutor Shan Wu and former U.S. attorney Michael Moore.

Michael, let me ask you about this move by the Manhattan DA, now looking to get the tapes from Trump's deposition for E. Jean Carroll's attorneys.

Any reason to think they won't get it?

MICHAEL MOORE, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: Well, I'm glad to be with all of you.

It really is not, in my mind, not that big of a deal. Remember, we are just at sort of what I'd call the pre-trial discovery phase. We're not really talking about whether or not this information would actually come into court.

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MOORE: But the problem that the prosecutors are going to have, I think, is comments about women and how Trump may have treated women in the past. And it may make him one of the most despicable people that we can talk about.

But whether or not that adds to criminality is something else. So comments that he made back in 2016 and comments that he may have made about Ms. Carroll in the deposition and those kinds of things I think are not necessarily something that may come in the case. The other subpoenas, the subpoenas about the documents and the

subpoenas about emails and communications while he was at the White House, I think those are more likely to be important and may, in fact, go to Trump's arguments that the case should be moved to federal court since we're now talking about things that happened during his time as president.

BOLDUAN: That's really interesting, Michael.

Shan, as Michael, of course, points out it's early in the process.

What does the totality of this and the moves suggest about the DA's case suggest against Trump in the hush money case?

SHAN WU, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I think Michael laid it out very well. Trump argument is fishing around for stuff makes me look bad and it's not really relevant.

But I think on the DA's argument's side, it's quite strong because, to me, it goes to his pattern of conduct, not in the sense of misbehaving or lousy behavior toward women but the pattern of conduct with how he deals with allegations from women that there's been some sort of a sexual interaction.

And so part of the Stormy Daniels issue is he's paying hush money to cover it up. So I actually think it is quite relevant if they want to establish this is how he deals with these kinds of allegations. That's why they're looking for it.

On the communications with White House staff, he might have slightly better arguments that there's something federal or presidential with that. But when you have Melania communicating with her aide or her scheduling assistant, it's hard to imagine there's something privileged about that.

And while it may have the atmospheric of seeming more presidential, I don't think it will be a basis for him to move to federal court. That's a pretty untested situation.

BOLDUAN: Let me ask you about Hunter Biden's plea deal that was announced yesterday.

Shan, the main reaction from the GOP, is this shows a double standard when it comes to the judicial system, that Hunter Biden got off easy because of who his father is. I want to play this for you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA), HOUSE SPEAKER: You are the leading opponent of the president. You're going to get jail time. But if you're the son of the president you don't get any jail time.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): This does not happen if Hunter's last name is anything other than Biden. If he's Hunter Smith, he's doing hard time.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BOLDUAN: Shan, you say that that's not only inaccurate. I've seen what you've been writing. But you think it's the opposite of this. Explain.

WU: Yes. I think that's exactly backwards. It's absolutely important that his last name is Biden. If his last name was not Biden I don't even think he would have been charged. Typically in tax cases, where the person has paid back the taxes, appetite for going after them criminally is low.

This is not a monstrous amount of taxes, about $100,000 underpaid in two years. And second, with regard to the gun application charge, that's rarely gone after as a standalone unless the gun later got used in some sort of crime.

So I actually think Biden is getting the short end of the stick on this because it's such a high-profile case. The Justice Department will make sure that it has some accountability for it to make them look very fair and evenhanded.

BOLDUAN: Michael, if this case crossed your desk as U.S. attorney and this was not the president's son, it was someone else, what would you have told your team to do?

MOORE: This case would have never come across my desk if I was a U.S. attorney because it is so low profile and there's just nothing to it. Shan is right. If we're going to start charging people for making a statement on an application about a gun, we would have to build a country full of jails.

But you're never going to satisfy the other side.

If they'd given him life in prison, they'd be asking why did not they cut his head off with the guillotine or something?

There's nothing to this and they're just trying to make something much ado about nothing. Biden was probably more severely looked at -- and remember this was a Trump-appointed prosecutor who remained in place to finish this case.

And I believe he's come out and said there was nothing political about this. So I don't know how they're complaining about their own people making a decision in a case that, really, had it been anybody else, would have never seen the light of day and certainly wouldn't be the subject of the media scrutiny.

So I -- you know, he was treated differently but he was treated differently to his detriment.

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BOLDUAN: This is why we bring you guys on. You're the experts. Michael Moore, Shan Wu, thank you both -- John.

BERMAN: Happening today, the man accused of leaking documents online is set to be arraigned. Jack Teixeira, a Massachusetts Air National Guard member, was indicted last week and he's facing six criminal charges, including willful retention and transmission of classified information related to national defense.

CNN's Oren Liebermann joins us now.

What's expected today?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: That arraignment scheduled for later this afternoon before 4 o'clock. And as to what we will see in court, this will be fairly simple; 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, a member of the Air National Guard, accused of leaking troves of classified information.

He will hear the counts he's charged with, six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information. And for the first time we expect Teixeira and his lawyers to enter a plea. They've not yet entered a plea of guilty or not guilty so that is expected to be part of the arraignment.

And the judge will then schedule the next hearing. Teixeira was indicted last week by a grand jury on these six counts. Prosecutors say he leaked this information, first by accessing it on classified systems with sensitive information and then copying it down and posting notes of it online and then taking pictures of documents and posting those online.

Prosecutors say his posting of information lasted just under 1.5 years from January of 2022 to April of this year.

In terms of the information with which he's being charged with leaking, prosecutors say and the indictment says that we looked at last week for the first time that some of these documents contain sensitive and classified information about the war in Ukraine, including troop movements and the provisions of equipment.

Some of these documents also had information about a foreign adversary trying to target U.S. troops abroad and a foreign adversary trying to compromise information of a U.S. bank. So John, in terms of what to expect, we'll keep you posted on the latest movements in court and where it goes from here.

BERMAN: That is later today. Oren Liebermann, thank you so much.

SIDNER: The search for that submersible, the first update since sonar picked up banging sounds under the water, will happen in a few hours. The U.S. Coast Guard expected to detail what they now know. We'll have the very latest.

Special counsel John Durham facing questions from House lawmakers on his investigation of the FBI probe into Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and its alleged ties to Russia. A live report from Capitol Hill next.

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