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Two Witnesses Testify Today Instead of Tomorrow as Trump Grand Jury in GA Appears to Move Quickly; Survivor in Inferno: "Help Us, Send Your Angels"; Ukraine: Russian Boarding Cargo Ship "An Act of Piracy." Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired August 14, 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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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: A pivotal grand jury hearing in Georgia is happening right now, and it is moving faster than expected. We're live in Atlanta where an indictment against former president, Trump, and others could come at any time.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Plus, in Hawaii, a new lawsuit blaming the power company for those catastrophic wildfires on Maui. But officials have not said what caused them. The humanitarian crisis now growing along with the death toll. The fire now the deadliest in the United States in over a hundred years.

And tense moments in the Black Sea as Russia fires warning shots at a cargo ship, then sends armed soldiers aboard.

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

SCIUTTO: A fourth Donald Trump indictment could be on the way and even as soon as today, as the grand jury of the Trump election subversion case in Georgia is rapidly approaching the finish line. Today, jurors are hearing from witnesses as Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, presents her case. Things appear to be moving even faster than expected.

Two witnesses set to testify tomorrow got bumped up to today. Trump has tried to counter the grand jury activity with a flurry of social media posts smearing key players, including witnesses in that case.

CNN's Sara Murray and Alayna Treene are tracking all this.

Sara, you're down there in Fulton County. Let's begin with you.

So a couple of witnesses we thought were going to show up tomorrow. They're there today. What do we know?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Yes. This grand jury is having a very busy day and apparently moving very swiftly. Look, Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, has begun presenting her case against former president, Donald Trump, and his allies. We know from our sources that she intends to seek more than charges

against more than a dozen individuals. And we've already seen a couple of these witnesses come in and out today. We saw former Democratic state senator, Jen Jordan, going in to testify. We heard from former Democratic state representative, Bee Nguyen, who said in a statement that she testified before the grand jury today. Both of them were witnesses to these sort of conspiracy-laden presentations that Trump's legal team made before Georgia state lawmakers in December 2020.

And as you pointed out, there were two witnesses we expected to see tomorrow, independent journalist George Chidi and former Georgia lieutenant governor and CNN contributor Geoff Duncan. We learned that both of them have been told to come in and testify today.

So it is clear the grand jury is moving at a faster clip than what the district attorney's office originally anticipated, guys.

SCIUTTO: Question. Do we know when the grand jury is scheduled to wrap up for today? Does that give us any indication as to when they might finish up their work for good?

MURRAY: We don't have a clear deadline for when they may wrap up today. Normally, this courthouse behind me closes at 5 PM. And when this grand jury is hearing the normal array of cases, it's not unusual for them to be done by 1- or 2 o'clock in the afternoon. It does not seem like that's what's likely to happen today. It seems like they're going to be here, at least, for a couple more hours.

So we're waiting to see for any indications that things are winding down for the day. But again, we're expecting two more witnesses.

SCIUTTO: Sara, thanks so much.

Alayna, as the grand jury portion of this nears its conclusion, Trump has been attacking it on social media, but also, it seems, applying some pressure to witnesses in the case.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: It is. He is. He's - we're using the same playbook now that we've seen him use the past three - with the past three indictments that he has faced as he's trying to get ahead of a potential indictment in Georgia and message it on his own terms.

But I think one of the most concerning things that we saw from Donald Trump today on social media was him go after a key witness in this case, the former lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, also a CNN contributor, arguing that he "shouldn't speak to the grand jury." And that post reads: Donald Trump said, "I am reading reports that failed former Lt. Governor of Georgia, Geoff Duncan, will be testifying before the Fulton County Grand Jury. He shouldn't. I barely know him but he was, right from the beginning of this Witch Hunt, a nasty disaster for those looking into the Election Fraud that took place in Georgia."

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And his post went on to say that Duncan was a loser. Of course, I want to point out that he spelled Geoff Duncan's name

wrong in that post. But the thing here, Jim, is that it's unclear what will happen from these posts. We don't know if he's going to be indicted. And we don't know if a Georgia - judge in this case is going to try and put restrictions on what Donald Trump can say on social media.

Of course, in a separate case ...

SCIUTTO: Yes.

TREENE: ... in the federal case regarding his efforts to overturn the 2020 Election, the judge has begun to set restrictions on what he can do on social media. But I know, from my conversations with Donald Trump's team, that even in spite of that warning from the judge in the other case, he's not planning to cease posting.

He sees Truth Social and social media as his way to communicate directly with voters, particularly his base and defend himself. And so they think it's his First Amendment right.

SCIUTTO: Well, in this or any other case, judges often rule that you don't - they don't want them to pollute the jury pool, one ...

TREENE: Right.

SCIUTTO: ... and they also don't want them to intimidate witnesses. We should also note Geoff Duncan, like many of the other witnesses against Trump in this case, is actually a Republican.

TREENE: That's right.

SCIUTTO: Alayna Treene, Sara Murray - again, Alayna, thanks so much. Boris.

SANCHEZ: Let's break down some of the key details in this case. Remember, this all started with that infamous phone call that then- President Trump made to the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger. We have a chunk of it, listen.

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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So look, all I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: A call that will go down in history in part because after that call, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis started investigating, looking into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn Biden's 2020 win and this involves potential violations of state law. Let's break it down.

Charges that could include election fraud, making false statements to state and local officials and even racketeering, which Willis previously used to prosecute gangs and even public school officials who oversaw a cheating scheme. Here are some of the key players in all of this.

Of course, we have DA Fani Willis, the judge overseeing the special grand jury, Robert McBurney. He's actually defended Willis and her integrity, though he did block her from pursuing a case against then- state senator, Burt Jones, an alleged fake elector, because Willis hosted a political fundraiser for his political opponent.

Meantime, you have Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, who was on that call. The infamous find the votes call from Donald Trump. He rejected Donald Trump's efforts and certified the results in the peach-state not once, but twice.

And then there's Rudy Giuliani. He's accused of presenting bogus claims of election fraud to state officials. You also have former Georgia Republican chair David Shafer. He told the House Select Committee that Trump directed the fake elector scheme.

Remember, 16 fake electors in all, which tried to overturn Biden's legit electoral votes and give them to Donald Trump. Sixteen of them in total, many of them now cooperating with the district attorney's investigation.

Let's dig deeper now in all of this and bring in Georgia State University law professor Clark Cunningham and Republican strategist, Doug Heye. Gentlemen, thank you both for being with us.

DOUG HEYE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Clark, I want to start with you. What do you make of the pace of what's happening in the courthouse in Fulton County right now? It seems like they are blowing through witnesses. Earlier in the day, we spoke to the former lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, who was set to testify tomorrow. Turns out he's actually testifying today. What do you make of that?

PROF. CLARK CUNNINGHAM, GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAW: Well, District Attorney Fani Willis kind of set herself a deadline some time ago that if the former president was going to be brought into the courthouse for arraignment, that it was going to happen by this Friday, the 18th, because she's asked the other judges - the judges in the courthouse to keep people out of the courthouse, to not hold hearings through the end of this week.

So if she doesn't indict in time to arraign the former president by the end of Friday, there's going to be a problem with all the security arrangements that have been made, because they haven't been made past this Friday.

So my guess is that she's looking at trying to get the former president into the courthouse, my guess is, by Thursday. And, of course, it would have to be scheduled with Secret Service and everything like that.

So it may be that as much as we were expecting indictments at the end of the day tomorrow, that she's aiming to get the indictments out by the end of today so she can get the former president here by Thursday. That - that's my guess.

SANCHEZ: And Doug, we've seen Donald Trump go after people like Geoff Duncan and the judge overseeing the Special Counsel case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 Election here in the nation's capital.

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How does that work as a political strategy? It doesn't seem to be hurting Donald Trump in polls.

HEYE: Well, this indictment looks potentially to be very different, when we've had these previous indictments. We've seen an immediate effect of a rallying around Donald Trump and certainly a big fundraising boost for Trump, while wondering what the long-term effect might be with suburban women voters, independent voters, people who voted for Donald Trump in 2016, but Joe Biden in 2020.

It's a very real difference here, Boris, and that's - this is Georgia. And Jim alluded to this earlier about the people that he's attacking are Republicans. And as we've seen in previous elections, whether they're Senate elections or presidential, Donald Trump's behavior in the state of Georgia hurts him politically in the state of Georgia.

And in a way, that could really determine who wins in 2024 or not if Donald Trump is the nominee. We know that he lost the state. We do know that he lost the state last time. And that he cost Republicans two Senate seats, which is one of the reasons that a lot of Republicans would just prefer to see Donald Trump go away one way or another. This further exacerbates that.

If you're a Georgia Republican and Donald Trump's not just attacking you, but your colleagues who have won primaries in the state through Republican Party and also been elected statewide, this is not good politics.

SANCHEZ: Yes, we saw that Donald Trump and his argument about the 2020 Election became a central focus, not only in the last midterm, but in the 2021 special election that followed the 2020 Election in Georgia.

Clark, to you, Geoff Duncan, a CNN contributor, was on a couple of hours ago with us and I asked him directly if he felt intimidated by the former president directly insulting him on social media, saying that he should not testify before the grand jury. He was a very disciplined witness and would not share his perspective. But from a legal standpoint, does a witness need to feel intimidated for it to be witness intimidation?

CUNNINGHAM: No. No. It could be attempted intimidation. It's possible that the former president got himself a couple of extra criminal charges against himself today. They may be revising the draft indictment to add a count - well, really two counts, one kind of witness intimidation or attempted witness intimidation and then attempted witness intimidation becomes another basis for that big racketeering charge that carries a minimum five years in prison.

So it was an extremely unwise thing for the former president to do to write something which so clearly, I mean, it says he should not testify in front of the grand jury. That's pretty clear.

SANCHEZ: It's also detached from the reality of the situation in Georgia in terms of what the lieutenant - the former lieutenant governor was trying to do after the 2020 Election and get the truth out there to the people of Georgia and to the country.

Doug, I wanted to go back to a point that you made about this hurting Donald Trump in Georgia, because obviously the backdrop of this is the 2024 presidential campaign. And he's leading pretty broadly across the map in Iowa, New Hampshire, et cetera. How do you think this plays out when it comes to his effort to take the Republican ticket in 2024?

HEYE: It shouldn't hurt him and it shouldn't hurt him for two reasons. One, ultimately and bizarrely, this reinforces Donald Trump's message. He says and he has said all along the system's rigged and it's rigged against me, it's rigged against you. This becomes evidence of that to his base.

And the other is his opponents, by and large, still seem to be hesitant to attack Donald Trump on the things that any other candidate would do in any other race for any other office. If your opponent is indicted, whether it's one time or multiple times, you go after him.

Donald Trump, by and large, has been free from that process, which makes the debate coming up more interesting. But also this hurts him not just in Georgia, but we learn from Georgia how it can hurt him in other states. Donald Trump argued over and over again that the process is rigged, that the elections are rigged. And enough Republican voters believe Donald Trump that they didn't fill in mail-in ballots. They didn't vote. They didn't vote in the runoff in the Senate races and so forth.

That's not just going to affect Georgia. That can affect my home state of North Carolina. That's going to be very close. That can affect Arizona. These close states could be imperiled for Republicans if Donald Trump is the nominee because of how he would defend himself in a trial.

SANCHEZ: A fascinating point. Doug Heye, Clark Cunningham, we've got to leave the conversation there. Appreciate you joining us.

HEYE: Thank you.

CUNNINGHAM: Glad to be with you.

SANCHEZ: Of course. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Ahead, we are going to take you live to Maui, where multiple firefighters are now detailing the horrific battle, describing how fire hydrants on the island reportedly ran dry as the town of Lahaina burned.

Plus, Russia accused of piracy after armed soldiers board a Turkish cargo ship in the Black Sea.

And the FAA is investigating yet another near-collision on a runway.

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This time, the jets only avoided each other by less than 100 feet. We have the pilots' audio with air traffic control all coming up.

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SCIUTTO: Now to Hawaii again. The nation's deadliest fire in a century has killed at least 96 people and the death toll from the catastrophe last week expected to rise. Only 3 percent of the impact area has been searched so far. The head of FEMA, who was there on the ground, spoke just a short time ago.

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DEANNE CRISWELL, FEMA DIRECTOR: Nothing can prepare you for what I saw during my time here and nothing can prepare them for the emotional toll of the impact that this severe event has taken on them.

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SCIUTTO: We are hearing more terrifying stories of survival. One video shows Jonah Tomboc's family waiting out the flames on rocks by the ocean.

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Listen to what she recorded before this as she and her family tried to drive out of the inferno on Lahaina's Front Street.

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JONAH TOMBOC: Oh, (expletive) MJ (ph), wrong turn. Wrong turn.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: MJ, MJ, MJ ...

TOMBOC: Oh, (expletive) ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just keep going. Keep going.

TOMBOC: (Expletive), no, no, no, no, no, no, not like this. Not like this ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just keep going.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Go, go, go ...

TOMBOC: ... not like this, no. God, the car, (expletive). Help us, send your angels.

(END VIDEO CLIP) SCIUTTO: Lord, the fear, just incredible.

CNN's Bill Weir has traveled through multiple checkpoints now on the island to the worst of the fire.

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BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: This is the line that the fire department on this part of Lahaina held. They decided we're going to keep it here, this particular neighborhood. Most of it survived as a result.

But let me show you the contrast right here. This is the home of Archie Kalepa. He is a legendary surfer, lifeguard, a Waterman Hall of Famer on Maui, a ninth generation Hawaiian family from the Lahaina area. And you can see what the spirit of ohana or family in the islands means as everybody on Maui and from around the islands began flooding donations here.

So they've set up a command post, improvised first responders here, all volunteers, all people from the community, and they've created several of these pods around the burned area of the fire zone. You can see all the diapers and critical supplies, the water and food, and people just coming in here and it's sort of a self-organizing system.

Archie has great leadership experience as a lifeguard extraordinaire and it's all coming to play right now. People trust him. He does say that the state and federal response is getting a bad rap.

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WEIR: Let me ask you about the immediate response right now.

ARCHIE KALEPA, HELPING TO ORGANIZE DONATIONS FOR MAUI VICTIMS: Yes.

WEIR: There's a perception, as we've been outside of the perimeter that there's no federal or real official state response. And most of the work on the front lines are being done by people like you, grassroots, just improvised first responders.

KALEPA: Yup.

WEIR: Is that fair? What's really happening? What do you need and what's the story?

KALEPA: I don't think that's fair. I don't think that's fair, because the - this is a crime scene. This right here is a crime scene. And so what people don't understand is the government has to do due diligence before they start moving in.

So they're at 30,000 feet. They're looking, evaluating about how they need to come in to begin to facilitate this operation. At the same time, they have to figure out how to take care of this operation and so that is not easy.

WEIR: So it's a humanitarian response ... KALEPA: Exactly.

WEIR: ... in the middle of an - a working crime scene.

KALEPA: Exactly. The truth of the matter is, when you look at the overall devastation, we are not going to be ready to allow people to see what we're living through in six months.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WEIR: We're hearing from a lot of people outside of the sort of quarantine zone right now, the fire zone. They're frustrated because they can't get back in to see what happened to their homes or belongings. They're afraid that people up here aren't getting the help they need, that there's too much red tape in the shelters down in the center of Maui there.

But those folks here say right now it's a matter of managing the outpouring of aid. They don't want a lot of this to turn into trash. So they're trying to manage it as it's coming in. FEMA is now starting to bring in shipments, we understand.

So right now the message from here is they have enough - plenty of tangible supplies. They would love to get a dust shield to protect this community from all that toxic dust that's blowing up the hillside from down below, containers to store a lot of this stuff and keep it to when they need it maybe months from now. And they're really begging for sustainable compassion and grief.

They're afraid that our attention here will run out and shift elsewhere, maybe another tragedy on our overheated planet as a result of fossil fuels. They dream - they're already starting to talk about rebuilding this place in a sustainable way that adheres to sort of traditional Hawaiian values and a balance with nature as well, so they're trying to get through this in real time. It's so striking.

But like I always say, you guys have heard me say it a million times, Mr. Rogers taught us to look for the helpers when things get scary.

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There's no shortage of that.

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SCIUTTO: The scale of the outreach there. Well, it gives you a little hope. Thanks so much to Bill Weir. Boris?

SANCHEZ: Ukraine calls Russia's boarding of a cargo ship in the Black Sea on Sunday a deliberate attack and an act of piracy. Russia's defense ministry says one of its warships fired warning shots and then boarded the vessel after it refused to stop for an inspection.

Video captured by the Turkish crew on the cargo ship shows crew members sitting and waiting on deck as a Russian military helicopter hovers closely over the vessel and soldiers with guns board the ship. CNN's Nic Robertson joins us now live.

So Nic, walk us through what happened during this incident.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, so this is a Turkish-owned, Turkish-operated container ship on its way to go and pick up Ukrainian grain. It's going to do that along a route it's been going on for the past - been using for the past year - a system that's been in place for the past year.

The Russians, though, are taking exception to what the Ukrainians are doing, allowing ships like this to come in and get their grain. The - Russia was part of this grain deal, the Black Sea grain deal, which it pulled out of, and Ukraine has said we're going to keep going. And this ship appears to be part of that.

So the captain, when these Russian troops came aboard from this helicopter, along with what looked like a senior civilian, perhaps, clambered aboard this ship, jumping out of the helicopter as it hovered low over it. The captain was asked, well, why did you try to steer away when we fired warning shots from the ship and from the helicopter. And he said, look, I'm in international waters, and I've got a right to be here, and I was trying to get to a place where I could have better communications with the shore, he says.

Then, the Russians looked at the documents of the crewmen, seemed to pass them, the passports, et cetera. They're all Turkish. And then the captain says the Russians didn't really do anything about searching everything else on board the ship after about an hour they took off. And for this crew and certainly for the Ukrainian government, this feels like real intimidation on them, trying to get their grain to the international markets, which really need it.

SANCHEZ: And Nic, we're also learning new details about a plan from the Kremlin to equip nuclear submarines with hypersonic missiles.

ROBERTSON: Yes, these are the super fast, five times the speed of sound missiles that are hard to intercept. They're hard to intercept because they're fast. These Zircon missiles or the variant of hypersonic missile that Russia uses from its - ships at the moment, it already has them armed with that.

But to put it on nuclear-powered submarines, that makes them harder to detect. You don't know where they're going to pop up. Of course, they can stay submerged for a long time. So this increases the threat against the Ukrainians and, frankly, anyone else within reach of these Zircon hypersonic missiles.

We know that the Russians have fired hypersonic missiles at Kyiv before and they've been intercepted by Patriot batteries. But when these missiles are on a submarine and you don't know where they come up, it's harder to track them because the flight range might be shorter. If you can't track them, you can't shoot them down.

So this escalates the tensions, makes the situation more dangerous.

SANCHEZ: Yes, stunning escalation.

Nic Robertson, thank you so much. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Coming up next on CNN NEWS CENTRAL, a new twist in the Hunter Biden case, why his lawyers say the plea deal they previously struck is binding despite it having appeared to fall apart. And prosecutors in Georgia are moving faster than originally expected. The latest from the Fulton County courthouse where another indictment against the former president could come in soon.

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