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Wagner Boss in Russia After Failed Coup, Says Belarusian President; Russian Strike on Lviv Apartment Building Kills 5, Injures 36; Soon, Aide Accused of Helping Trump Hide Documents Appears in Court. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired July 06, 2023 - 10:00   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: Where is Prigozhin? The world thought that question was answered last week. Now, a close ally of Vladimir Putin is igniting the intrigue of his whereabouts once again. CNN is directly asking the Belarusian president about these turn of events.

JOHN BERMAN: CNN ANCHOR: All right, very shortly, Trump Aide Walt Nauta is set to appear before a federal judge to plead not guilty to charges he helped conceal secret files, then lied about it. We have new details on the surveillance video prosecutors had in hand even before they searched Mar-a-lago.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Investigators in Philadelphia say untraceable ghost guns were used in a mass shooting that killed five people Monday. Now, the city is taking action against two ghost gun distributors. We're following these developing stories and many more, all coming in here to CNN News Central.

BOLDUAN: This morning, the Kremlin is refusing to say whether the man responsible for staging a rebellion against Putin is in Russia, yet the president of Belarus just told CNN's Matthew Chance that Yevgeny Prigozhin is actually in St. Petersburg, Russia. That's all the more extraordinary since it was that same president of Belarus who said in the days after the revolt that Prigozhin was living in Belarus. Prigozhin has not been seen in public for nearly two weeks now.

Though it's unclear exactly where the Wagner leader is, we do see that Russian state media has launched what looks like a classic smear campaign against him, airing this footage of a purported police raid of his home, Prigozhin's home and office.

There are some images that we're going to show you, some images of what they say, the things that they found in his has multiple passports, as you can see, a cupboard full of wigs and documents, multiple aliases on those passports, as well as ammunition and large amounts of cash.

CNN's Matthew Chance is following all of this for us from Minsk, Belarus, this morning. MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, invited us here to the Palace of Independence, this marble clad edifice in the center of Minsk. It's one of his presidential offices for a press conference, and what he said was a conversation about all the dramatic events that have been unfolding over the past couple of weeks. Of course, the main interest was the whereabouts of Wagner, the Russian mercenary group, and its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

So, I got a chance to ask Alexander Lukashenko what update he could give us about that mercenary group that, of course, staged a military uprising in Russia just last month.

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CHANCE: I wonder if you could provide us all with a bit of an update on the whereabouts of the Wagner leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Is he in Belarus or not?

ALEXANDER LUKASHENKO, BELARUSIAN PRESIDENT: In terms of Yeviny Prigozhin, he is in St. Petersburg. Or maybe this morning, he would travel to Moscow or elsewhere. But he is not on the territory of Belarus now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHANCE: Also, stunning news there from Alexander Lukashenko. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner leader, meant to be here. He's not here. His fighters are not here either. He said the deal is still on the table is what he insisted, but it has not been finally agreed yet.

Meanwhile, in Russia, on state television, we've been seeing these extraordinary images of what they say is Yevgeny Prigozhin's house, one of his houses in St. Petersburg, where police have raided and they have seized gold bars, cash, passports, some with false names, with Yevgeny Prigozhin's photographs, and wigs, strangely, which could be obviously used as disguise, weapons as well.

And it all implies that Russia is sort of moving to discredit the Wagner leader, possibly ahead of arrest, although that's not been confirmed yet. I spoke to the Kremlin earlier today, and they said at the moment they're not commenting on it.

But, clearly, the deal for Wagner and its leader to be exiled in Belarus is at the least being renegotiated, and that could end very badly indeed for Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Matthew Chance, CNN, in Minsk, Belarus.

BOLDUAN: Extraordinary reporting, as always, from Matthew Chance. Thank you.

BERMAN: It really is. I mean, not the least of which where he was standing. It gives you a sense of some of the grandeur that Lukashenko wants to project there. [10:05:01]

BOLDUAN: Exactly.

BERMAN: Such large questions remain this morning, where is Prigozhin, is really just scratching the surface with this.

With us now is the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and the vice president of Europe and Russia at the Institute of Peace, William Taylor. Ambassador, great to see you.

If Yevgeny Prigozhin has been, and I'm using this word in quotations, allowed to somehow to St. Petersburg, why? Why would that be?

WILLIAM TAYLOR, VICE PRESIDENT, EUROPE AND RUSSIA AT U.S. INSTITUTE OF PEACE: John, it's a great question, of course. We don't know. St. Petersburg is Prigozhin's home. That's where he came from. That's where Putin came from. That's where the Wagner headquarters is. And you've been showing the raids on those headquarters, so we don't know why he's there.

The issue, the real issue, though, is the problem for Putin. I mean, here's a man who led -- Prigozhin, who led a mutiny, who killed some Russian soldiers, who was attacking up the M4 toward Moscow, and all of a sudden he's given amnesty. He's supposed to go to Belarus. He's not in Belarus. So, the deal that got him off the hook is undercooked (ph).

The other interesting thing, John, is Prigozhin's deputy, or Prigozhin's accomplice, is a Russian general who hasn't been seen or heard from in a week.

BERMAN: You say Prigozhin is a problem for Vladimir Putin. We know what Vladimir Putin does with problems. So, if he's still alive, why is Yevgeny Prigozhin still alive?

TAYLOR: Because Prigozhin seems to have some following, maybe among Russian people, because he's kind of a populist. Prigozhin has taken the side of the little man, of the people that are recruited into the army and are sent to their death in Ukraine. Prigozhin has been seen to cast doubts, strong doubts, on why Putin even sent these soldiers into Ukraine. And he also seems to have -- Prigozhin also seems to have some following among the Russian military.

I mentioned his deputy, or his accomplice, Surovikin, who has not been heard from or seen, a general in the army, who apparently was supportive of Prigozhin against Putin. So that's why I say Putin has got a problem.

BERMAN: What kind of power, realistically, does Prigozhin still have?

TAYLOR: He apparently has his forces. He's got somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000 well-trained forces. We don't know, no one knows, we don't know where they are. They were given a choice of retiring, of joining the Russian military or going to Belarus. It's not clear that they did any of those. So, they may still be there with there somewhere with Prigozhin. We don't know. But that gives him some -- that's why, again, Putin must be concerned about where Prigozhin and Wagner is.

BERMAN: Ambassador, you've been in, around, or with your eye on Russia and Vladimir Putin for some time, longer than most of us. Have you ever seen him behave like this? What does his current behavior tell you?

TAYLOR: Let me be clear, John. I'm not an expert on Putin. There are better experts than I am on Vladimir Putin. But you're right, this is unusual. He panicked at some point over last weekend. He was angry. He was talking about crushing Prigozhin and Wagner. And then by the end of the day, apparently, the day spent in St. Petersburg, by the way, but the end of the day, he had some kind of a deal, an agreement with Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, being the intermediary.

This is not strength. This is not a demonstration of strength on the part of Putin. He is now cracking down. He doesn't know who's loyal to him. So, this is unusual, John. This is not the projection that Putin has wanted us to see. It is one of a weaker autocrat than we had thought.

BERMAN: What evidence have you seen so far, and it's been a short period of time, that Ukraine has been able to exploit this period of uncertainty or maybe weakness for Putin?

TAYLOR: So, the one thing that happened in Ukraine is morale is even higher. When the Ukrainians were watching this play out with Prigozhin and Wagner and Putin and this mutiny, the Ukrainians were amused. They were very interested to see that their enemy, clearly, Russia is their enemy, is in disarray.

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The chain of command, the Russian chain of command, military chain of command was fractured. It was a mutiny. That was a big morale boost for the Ukrainians.

BERMAN: And, obviously, morale in and of itself, can often be decisive in a battle like this. Ambassador Bill Taylor, great to have you on. Thank you so much for your help, trying to understand this, even while so much of it is still opaque. I appreciate it. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. The mayor of Lviv says his city just experienced the most devastating attack on civilians since the beginning of Russia's war on Ukraine. Overnight, a Russian missile struck an apartment building, killing five people and injuring dozens of others. You are looking at drone video there of the destruction.

Right now, hundreds of rescue crews are on scene searching for people who may be buried alive in the rubble. We've now learned a 95-year-old World War II survivor was one of the residents killed in that attack.

Let's go live to CNN's Ben Wedeman, who is in Ukraine for us. Ben, can you give us some sense of how these rescue efforts are going? BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're struggling. And the Ukrainians are used to dealing with this sort of catastrophe. Although it must be pointed out, Lviv is one of the quietest, calmest, most peaceful corners of Ukraine. It's very close to the Polish border, and many people have fled from the east, for instance, and taken refuge in that area. So, it's a city in shock.

Now, we understand that the strike took place at 2:30 A.M., when everybody was asleep in that area. And it was struck by a Russian Kalibr missile. That is a hypersonic missile that carries more than a thousand pounds of high explosives. It's very accurate, and it flies so fast, it's difficult for air defenses to take it down.

Now, also, we've learned that in Lviv, ten bomb shelters had been locked shut, perhaps because nobody expected that Lviv would be struck in this manner. So, now the local authorities, in addition to being busy with clearing away the rubble, looking for survivors, is also now investigating why that was done and why people could not take shelter when they desperately needed it. Sara?

SIDNER: thank you for giving us some sense of how Lviv is. It's really important to note that people really went to Lviv to try and get away from the bombing. And here they are. We're seeing people just devastated by this because this was supposed to be more of a safe haven.

Ben Wedeman, thank you to you and your team there in Eastern Ukraine for your reporting. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, video of the moment Ukrainian brigade surrounds Russian soldiers in their foxhole near Bakhmut. The now prisoners of war speak with CNN.

Plus, a huge fire kills two firefighters in New Jersey. This all happened earlier this morning, and it all started on a cargo ship docked at port. New details that we have coming in, we'll bring those to you.

And in less than an hour, a close aide to Donald Trump will be facing a judge in Miami. He's accused of helping the former president hide classified documents and then lie to investigators about it. What's going to happen today to Walt Nauta? We'll be back.

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BERMAN: We are standing by to see Donald Trump's close aide and co- defendant arrive at a federal courthouse in Miami to face his arraignment, finally, in the secret documents probe. Prosecutors accuse Walt Nauta, and these are live pictures of the federal courthouse, of helping Trump hide documents. He is expected to plead not guilty to six charges.

Overnight, we learned there is surveillance video that appears to show Nauta new unredacted details from this search warrant affidavit last spring now reveal prosecutors saw multiple angles of a person moving boxes in and out of a basement storage closet.

CNN's Katelyn Polanyz has been following every angle of this case and joins us now. What do we expect in court today? And remind us why it's taken so long to get here.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Yes. Well, John, we do expect Walt Nauta himself to be there in court today after two false starts, two times he was in court before and was not able to enter a pleading of not guilty. Actually, one of those times, he didn't actually make it to court because of travel issues, getting on a plane, getting down to South Florida.

But he finally will be there today, and he will be able to enter that plea because he will have a lawyer from Florida there joining his legal team for the first time, a person who will assist in his other -- the other lawyers around him in taking him to trial, something that both he and Donald Trump, his co-defendant, they both want to do.

And just a reminder, Nauta is the co-defendant of Donald Trump. He's not accused of retaining those 31 classified records that Trump is accused of retaining after he left the presidency, but he's facing some hefty charges of obstruction and then lying to investigators in an interview, because prosecutors say that, allegedly, Walt Nauta moved boxes at Donald Trump's direction at least five times over the course of last summer while federal investigators were looking for them.

A total of 64 boxes were moved out of a storage room at Mar-a-Lago, and only about 30 of those boxes were brought back into the storage room so that the FBI was able to find them there later when they got a court authorized warrant to do a search.

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So, a lot of things that we're going to be looking for, but this hearing itself is going to be pretty short and sweet. John?

BERMAN: We did get our first look at some of the evidence that was part of the original affidavit in the search warrant that sort of deals with Nauta, Katelyn?

POLANTZ: Right. So, John, yesterday the Justice Department was able to release a version of a document that they had. It still has a lot of redactions in it, but it was the document they presented to a court last August when they were trying to get access to Mar-a-Lago to do that FBI search. They wanted the warrant, and so they had a bunch of details at that time.

It's not detail that we haven't seen in the indictment. It very much tracks what is charged, what Walt Nauta is accused of doing when he was indicted last month. But this document we have from court from last August now, it highlights how the Justice Department had video of him apparently going in and out of this storage room.

They write, on May 30th, four days after Witness Five, so that, we believe, is Walt Nauta after his interview with the FBI, during with the location of boxes, was a significant subject of questioning. Witness Five, Nauta is observed exiting the anteroom around a storage area, anteroom doorway with approximately 50 boxes.

So, that's something that the Justice Department had back then, even before that search video. They also had photos of boxes stacked up in the storage room at that time, even before they went into search for documents and pull out what they needed. John?

BERMAN: All right. Katelyn Polantz, thank you so much for the update. And, again, we are watching for the arrival of Walt Nauta in Miami. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Keep a close eye on that courthouse in Miami. In the meantime, joining us now is CNN Legal Analyst Karen Friedman Agnifilo. She was the chief assistant district attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. It's good to have you here, Karen.

So, Katelyn is always laying out perfectly kind of the state of play. Let's talk about the here and now and what we know that this appearance by Walt Nauta could be a quick and short one, but he was in court twice before and could not enter a plea because that he didn't have a Florida attorney.

You say this is not normal, but hold on with me, because you're going to watch this with me, Karen. Apparently, we're looking at live pictures in the scrum of Walt Nauta entering the courthouse. It appears -- once the camera studies, we'll watch it together.

But you can see that's him in the navy blue suit on the right, probably walking with his attorney. And we're going to get the back of him right as he enters that courthouse right now in Miami.

So, now we have Walt Nauta entering the courthouse for this appearance. He'd been there twice before, couldn't enter a plea because he didn't have a Florida attorney. You say that's not normal, that just this early appearance would drag on so long. Why do you think it is? What do you think is going on here?

KAREN FRIEDMAN AGNIFILO, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I think he has to get any lawyer that he hires approved through Donald Trump. So, I think that's part of the issue that Donald Trump has to approve. You know, they are linked together, the two of them. They are seen together. They go out to dinner together. They have Philly cheese steaks together. I mean, Donald Trump is making sure that Walt Nauta stays by his side and doesn't flip on him and turn against him, because Walt Nauta really has a lot of evidence against Donald Trump here.

BOLDUAN: Well, that's what I was going to ask you. I mean, as a prosecutor, how would you approach Walt Nauta, given what we know about him, his closeness with Donald Trump, in order to see -- to get him to try to cooperate with your investigation in the case against Donald Trump? I mean, he couldn't be closer to the former president, as you're just saying, eating cheese steaks. They were just seen in Philadelphia traveling together. Do you see opportunity here with him? AGNIFILO: There's absolute opportunity. I mean, there's such a disparate, right, between Donald Trump and Walt Nauta. Donald Trump is so much more powerful and clearly was the person directing Walt Nauta to move classified documents out of the storage room right before the FBI search, right. So, Walt Nauta is just a pawn, is Donald Trump's pawn here. And so there is an opportunity for him, I think, to testify truthfully and tell everybody what exactly Donald Trump told him to do and not do.

So, I think there is an opportunity if he wants to go in. And, I mean, look, he's already lied to the FBI. That's in the indictment. So, the prosecutors are going to have -- you have to live with that, because when you testify on the stand and you swear to tell the truth, one of the things that anyone would say to him is, well, how do we know you're telling the truth? You've lied before.

BOLDUAN: Yes. Why are you telling the truth now? You lied to us before.

AGNIFILO: Exactly.

BOLDUAN: And the extent to what the Justice Department had before even asking for the warrant to search the property is now kind of more coming to light as we're hearing from Katelyn in this new reporting, video evidence of moving boxes. Prosecutors, as you said, saying that Nauta lied to them.

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Do you think the case against Walt Nauta is a straightforward one?

AGNIFILO: It's fairly straightforward, yes. I mean, he's on video taking, I think, 64 boxes out and only bringing back about 25 or 30 right before the search warrant. I mean, that's what was revealed in the search warrant affidavit yesterday that we didn't know before. And it's fairly straightforward, yes.

BOLDUAN: The reporting is that source is say Trump controlled entities are expected to continue putting the bill for Nauta's representation. And this kind of gets what you're saying. They are so linked. How does that complicate what's going to happen here?

AGNIFILO: I mean, at a certain point, a judge is going to potentially make sure that there is no conflict of interest because of this, right? And so this is standard. This has been done in other cases, but that's what the judge will do. The judge will make sure that the lawyer is looking out for Walt Nauta's interest and Walt Nauta's interest only.

I mean, look, they could have their interests aligned, but they have to make sure Walt Nauta has to make sure that he agrees to that.

BOLDUAN: Right. Well, we're going to see at least the next step in this process together in the coming hours. We just saw Walt Nauta entering the courthouse in Miami for the first time today.

Thank you so much, Karen. I really appreciate it. Sara?

SIDNER: Coming up, the University of Idaho is moving forward with plans to demolish the house where four students were murdered last year. Why some of the victims parents want the university to hold off.

So-called ghost guns are virtually untraceable. What Philadelphia is now doing to try and stop the proliferation of ghost guns after police reveal the suspect in Monday's deadly mass shooting used two of them in his rampage.

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