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Israel At War; In Order To Facilitate Hostage Negotiations, U.S. Requests Israel To Postpone Invasion Of Gaza; Interview With "Red Line: American Foreign Policy" Author And Former Assistant Secretary Of State P.J. Crowley; Trump Asserts Sidney Powell Was Never Really His Legal Counsel; Trump Faces Legal Threat From Consecutive Plea Agreements; Gaza's Water Crisis; Gaza Receives Small Amounts Of Humanitarian Aid. Aired 10:30-11a ET
Aired October 23, 2023 - 10:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[10:33:11]
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Moments ago, you're looking here, President Biden was boarding Marine One in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. He's on his way back to the White House this morning. Now, he spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday afternoon one again about the ongoing conflict. And there are new concerns being raised now that Israel's war to take out Hamas could spread into a wider regional conflict. I want to play for you what U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told ABC yesterday.
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LLOYD AUSTIN, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: We're concerned about potential escalation. In fact, what we're seeing is a -- is the prospect of a significant escalation of attacks on our troops and our people throughout the region. And because of that, we're going to do what's necessary to make sure that our troops are in a right -- a good position, they're protected, and that we have the ability to respond.
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BOLDUAN: All right. Joining us now is P.J. Crowley, former assistant secretary of state under President Obama. He's also the author of "Red Line: American Foreign Policy in a Time of Fractured Politics and Failing States." P.J., it's good to see you. When you hear the secretary of defense say that, what do you hear in what seems like Lloyd Austin's carefully chosen words?
P.J. CROWLEY, AUTHOR: Well, the threat of escalation is very real. You know, think about what Secretary Tony Blinken reminded us yesterday. The long-term objective for the United States and Israel is a change in the status quo mean -- meaning an elimination of Hamas as both a military threat of Israel and the governing body of Gaza.
[10:35:00]
Who's going to try to prevent that from happening, not just Hamas and the impending military action by Israel but also Iran, which is one of, you know, their -- Tehran's, you know, proxies in the region. So, that dynamic, as you try to eliminate Hamas, that will obviously cross, you know, Iran's perceived interests in the region.
BOLDUAN: Yes. There is also this new reporting that the Biden administrations is pressing or asking Israel behind the scenes to delay the ground incursion in order to try and get more hostages out. I mean, Blinken, by all reports, is working nonstop on this. Talking with Qatar and Egypt to try and move this along. Can you describe for me how difficult you see these negotiations to be from a State Department perspective?
CROWLLEY: Well, I think from an American perspective, this is a very significant and complex conflict. You're trying to do a lot of different things at the same time. Obviously, you know, Israel is going to do what it does in terms of the military action. You want to get the hostages out if possible. And you are trying to figure out, you know, how do you use military action, you know, to set the stage for whatever you want to achieve the day after the conflict ends.
You know, and in some cases, these are objectives in conflict. You know, and that is one of the reasons why, you know, trying to figure out what you can do on the hostage front before you go into a ground incursion into Gaza, and you come into, you know, conflict with Hamas more directly.
BOLDUAN: And you said something that, I think, that bears repeating and discussion which is that as this continues, there is a reality that public opinion is critical and matters, and information and misinformation travels at the speed of light right now, further complicating, you could say, a lot. How does Israel get this right or how challenging is it while trying to dismantle Hamas who has controlled government in Gaza now, and all of the information flowing out of Gaza for 17 years.
CROWLEY: I mean, Kate, you know, Israel has described this as their 9/11. And if you think back to the American response to 9/11 in retrospect, we probably overmilitarized the response. And in terms of trying to transform the Middle East, you know, and Southeast Asia and -- or South Asia in terms of Afghanistan and Iraq, you know, we struggled with the political dimension. I think this is where, I think, the United States is asking Israel some tough questions, you know, as to how you link up a military strategy and a political strategy.
Because at the end of the day, if you are trying to change how Gaza is governed and Gaza's relationship with Israel, that is largely a political challenge far more than a military challenge. And so, that's where public opinion, you know, matters profoundly.
And right now, the challenge for Israel is that the Palestinian people who have a stake in what happens down the road, you know, they see themselves being at war with Israel in addition to Hamas seeing itself as being at war with Israel. But I think, you know, part of this is how do you use military action? How do you supply humanitarian assistance? How do you build or grow public opinion to support whatever you want to achieve once the military conflict is over. That is Israel's challenge the United States is certainly in a position to help.
BOLDUAN: Yes, day two, day three after you go in, those are huge questions. It's good to see you, P.J. Thank you very much.
John.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: And as we continue to watch the build-up of Israeli troops right along the Gaza border here, there is new reporting coming in involving Donald Trump, his handling of national security information while he was in the Oval Office. A Mar-a-Lago member says, Trump talked about his private phone calls with world leaders.
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[10:43:49]
BOLDUAN: So, Sidney Powell, last week, accepted a plea deal with prosecutors in Georgia. That quickly has set off what has become a now predictable response from Donald Trump, the former president trying to claim that Sidney Powell was never really his attorney at all. In a statement that he put out on social media, Donald Trump says, Sidney Powell who may now testify against him in the election subversion case said this, was not my attorney and never was.
But everything that logic and reality offer up signals that he wanted her to be and she was. On November 14th, 2020, Trump publicly boasted that he had added Powell to his legal team along with Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and others. A few days later, she spoke at a press conference. Pedaling conspiracies about how the election was stolen from Trump and coordinated with among others, as you'll remember, the Venezuelan government.
It was only after that mess that Rudy Giuliani released a statement claiming that Powell was practicing on her own. So, she also did go on to file frivolous lawsuits. Challenging the election across the country, all of which we know failed.
[10:45:00]
Still in December of 2020, Powell was invited to the now infamous White House meeting where Donald Trump considered naming her as a special counsel to look for voter fraud. So, add this to the growing file of Donald Trump, distancing himself from the people he was closest with once the heat gets too hot.
John.
BERMAN: All right. With us now, CNN's Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig. Elie, I have a small question and a big question. First, it's this small question, me and Kate were talking about right there. How important is it whether Sidney Powell was ever officially a lawyer for Donald Trump in terms of the case against Donald Trump? ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: It doesn't matter at all, legally, from Donald Trump's perspective. It actually might help him if she's not his attorney, right? So, it does not matter whether they were formally lawyer and client or not, what matters is she's a witness. She's in the room. She has eyes and ears. She saw what she saw. She heard what she heard at the December meeting and other. In fact, if anything, if she's not his attorney, prosecutors don't have to worry about the privileges, you know, attorney/client privilege. So, if I'm a prosecutor, I'm saying, fine, she's not your attorney. She's still a witness.
BERMAN: Thanks, Donald Trump, for clearing that up.
HONIG: Yes.
BERMAN: So, we cannot go through the -- you know, jump through the hoops of getting to the client privilege. All right. Bigger picture, how threatening of a witness is Sidney Powell to Donald Trump?
HONIG: So, any way you slice this is bad news for Donald Trump that Sidney Powell has split, that Kenneth Chesebro has split. There now two more witnesses for the prosecution. Insiders to varying extent, it's what the prosecution wants, it's how prosecution builds cases. But the big question to me that's going to really make the difference here is are they fully in as cooperators? Is Sidney Powell -- we know she's going to say, well, we accessed this information in Coffey County. But is she going to say, this was all a big fraud. I was in on it with him.
BOLDUAN: Would you make a plea agreement with witness like them if they weren't agreeing to be fully in?
HONIG: So, what I make plea deal, a very lenient plea deal with a witness who is helpful, absolutely. I've done it many times. But the second part of your question is really an important point. If they're not fully in, absolutely not. As a prosecutor, the federal way to do this -- and remember, we're now talking about Georgia State prosecutors, we'll have to see what DOJ does. The federal way is, you can only cooperate if you give up everything, if you admit to all the crimes you were involved in.
And the question I have here is -- let's remember, Fani Willis charged Sidney Powell with RICO, but didn't make her plead to RICO. She let her plead to these low-level misdemeanors. So, is she all the way in, that we have to watch for.
BERMAN: You got to listen to his podcast and read his books if you have haven't, because he talks about how tough he is when he cuts plea deals. Yes, he'll do it but you really have to come clean with everything in Elie Honig's world there.
I want to ask you about Anthony Pratt who's this odd Australian cardboard kind billionaire who is a member of Mar-a-Lago. There is this new reporting in "The New York times". First of all, it's extensive about how hard Pratt worked to get access to Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, which is interesting of itself. We're talking about pay for access, I mean, it really does seem like this guy reportedly was doing that. But he also talked allegedly about conversations that Trump had with him about talks that Trump had with world leaders when he was president.
How does that fit into -- I imagine, it would be the classified documents case against Trump, how does that fit and does this make Pratt an interesting witness?
HONIG: OK. So, outside of the legal world, it is interesting and worrisome from a national security point of view. But there's the question of how will or will Jack Smith use this? We know he has some of the statements from this Pratt individual. The way I would use it as a prosecutor is it shows knowledge. It shows intent and motive. It shows, why is Donald Trump interested in taking these classified documents? What's his purpose? I would argue, he loves having this stuff. He deploys it after his president however it's helpful for him personally. Building personal relationships. Perhaps building business relationships. All of it illegal and proper.
So, it sort of explains the why of this all. Why would he have taken the classified documents, I argue? It's part of the broader pattern. And these fits -- by the way, cardboard is very valuable. There are organized criminal rings that steal mass quantities of cardboard and then resell it, so --
BOLDUAN: Was that --
HONIG: -- there's something to it.
BOLDUAN: -- what that before the era of amazon.com or after?
HONIG: Good question. Right Amazon rose, yes. So, that's how he became a billionaire.
BOLDUAN: Thank you, Elie.
HONIG: All right.
BERMAN: All right. Humanitarian aid has begun to enter Gaza. Aid workers say, they need much, much more. We'll take you to the ground.
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[10:53:03]
SARA SIDNER, CNN HOST: Despite aid trucks trickling into Gaza, people there are in desperate need of water, food, fuel and medical supplies. The head of Doctors Without Borders in Jerusalem says, they need gas to run the water treatment plants. Without it, people are drinking untreated water and getting sick.
To give you some context, a new CNN calculation found Gaza is short more than 7,200 truckloads of the aid that would normally have been delivered since the October 7th attack. In other words, Gaza has only received half of one percent of the critical supplies that it typically gets in the Israeli blockade. Rene Marsh is digging deeper into the search for clean water and joins us live now with more. Rene, what are you hearing about how people are trying to deal with this situation there?
RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Sara. Well, the situation is being described as desperate by many humanitarian groups on the ground that I talked to. Crowds of people with empty jugs surrounding the little water that is available. Some areas have already run out of clean water. And the World Health Organization actually tells CNN, some people in Gaza have resorted to drinking sea water or untreated well water which obviously brings about many health risks and concerns.
And even with that aid that came about this weekend entering Gaza from Egypt, the full need is not being met.
[10:55:00]
So, water is being rationed out in parts of Gaza, from as little as half a gallon to about two gallons per person, per day for all of their needs, drinking, cooking, and hygiene. And that's dramatically less than the four gallons per person per day that the World Health Organization says is needed just to survive. So, I spoke with the head of the Palestinian water authority, here's what he had to say on the crisis.
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MINISTER MAZEN GHUNAIM, PALESTINIAN WATER AUTHORITY (through translator): If we succeeded in bringing in fuel, we don't need to bring in water. If they bring in fuel, we can operate facilities, we can deliver water to all different areas, so that all the water wells are operated and at the same time operate the sewage injection stations so that it does not pose a health problem.
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MARSH: So, again, you hear his plea for not only the water being turned back on and electricity, but also fuel. On the Israeli side, they have said that the reason why they are not sending fuel into Gaza is because they have the fear that that aid will be hijacked by Hamas. Sara.
SIDNER: Rene Marsh, thank you so much for that reporting. It is a humanitarian crisis there in Gaza that is only getting worse. I appreciate you.
All right. Ahead, there have been hundreds of airstrikes overnight inside Gaza. Our reporter who is on the Israeli-Gaza border says he's never seen a bombardment like the one he's been witnessing. We will have more on that story in just a bit.
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