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Wildfires Devastate Large Parts of Texas; Texas Suffering Second Largest Wildfire in Its History; Hunter Biden to Testify to House Committee Exploring Impeachment Charges against President Biden; Donald Trump and President Biden Win Michigan Presidential Primary. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired February 28, 2024 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

SEAN LYNGAAS, CNN CYBERSECURITY REPORTER: From dating apps, iPhones, Fitbits, that sort of thing that's out there that the administration is trying to batten down the hatches, but they're realizing that you really need comprehensive legislation from Congress to do that.

So this is a stopgap measure to make it harder for foreign intelligence services to scoop up data like this. It's been -- this data is freely available, and it's longstanding concern that U.S. officials have had that, say, a soldier at a U.S. military base in the U.S. is its using a Fitbit to go for a workout. That data goes back to a data center that if you're smart enough, you can figure out where that is. It's all bailable to be bought and sold legally in the U.S.

So this is an attempt to sort of claw back some of that security. And it comes amid really strong concerns in the administration and on Capitol Hill about Chinese surveillance in particular, given tensions between the us and China, John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Sean Lyngaas, thank you so much for that report. Keep us posted.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: We lost everything, that is what one person in Texas just told us this morning as wildfires are scorching the Texas panhandle. People are being formed forced to flee and crews are battling against at least five fires.

BERMAN: We are standing by for the Arrival of Hunter Biden on Capitol Hill. After fierce negotiations, he is set to testify shortly in the impeachment investigation into his father.

BOLDUAN: New findings about marijuana and the risk of heart attack and stroke.

I'm Kate Bolduan Baldwin with John Berman. Sara is off today. This is CNN News Central.

BERMAN: All right, and we do have breaking news. We just got word that the Smokehouse Creek big fire in Texas is the second largest wildfire that that state has ever seen. It is growing and growing quickly. Hundreds of thousands of acres have been scorched, homes and buildings destroyed. We just spoke to a children's pastor, a church that has been sheltering more than 200 people. She said several have told her, quote, we have lost everything.

And we just got some new scanner audio in from fire crews. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Multiple spots, Alan, multiple spots. We can't hold it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get out of there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's pull out. We've got too many spots.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pull out. Everybody, pull out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right behind you, right behind you. I shut down 136, shut it down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: And listen to that, listen to that, "We can't hold it." The fires, they are growing in size now, more than 500,000 acres. And you just heard it there. It is zero percent contained. Now Amarillo, Texas is home to a nuclear weapons facility. As of now, there's no fire on the property of that plant. The flames did get close overnight, and the plant was forced to evacuate for a time. It is back to a normal schedule now.

One rancher told CNN that there was no time to evacuate the animals before the fires arrived. They tried to corral the cows as the flames rushed toward them. You can see some of it there.

With us now, CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam, CNN's Lucy Kafanov who was in Amarillo. Lucy, let's start with you with the situation on the ground. What are you seeing? What are you hearing?

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In Amarillo, the visibility is extremely low. The air is full of thick smoke that burns your eyes, that burns your mouth. This is one of the safer areas, residents who can get here from neighboring counties are being asked to evacuate to shelter here. There was a neighborhood here in Amarillo that was also evacuated. That evacuation order now lifted.

The cognitive dissonance of covering a fire in such cold temperatures is certainly a thing, but it's really these high-speed winds that are fueling more than five, or at least five wildfires in the surrounding areas. As you point out now, the Smokehouse Creek fire, the second largest in Texas history. So many of the areas impacted, crews on the ground struggling to get these blazes under control. And I actually want to play a little more of that police scanner sound from the Borger police and fire departments. It really gives you a sense of how terrifying these moments are. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm using what recourse I have on these trees.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm copying. Unit five is coming to you.

[08:05:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They got water to fill me up. I'm just giving you a heads up, they're running out of water, so tankers supposedly had pressure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAFANOV: Running out of water, these are truly terrifying situations. And we spoke about the city of Fritch last hour, which had asked residents to evacuate last night, natural gas was turned off there. This warning, city officials are saying in Facebook posts that they need a massive 75,000 volt industrial generator to help get their water back up because the power is out. This is a really scary situation. They've got a 2,000 acre blaze and then they're also impacted by the Smokehouse Creek fire. And so a lot of the residents are struggling with a scenario there. In Canadian Texas also, one motel owner told CNN that it looks like Armageddon. There was a light dust and smoke all over the area. She had to evacuate. She had to shut down her motel. So many different places residents couldn't get out in time and so they had to shelter and local churches and local gymnasiums and local schools.

We are hearing from the weather service that the winds are supposed to be a little bit more tame today, but that does not mean that folks are in the clear. Again, those wildfires spreading. Texas doesn't have all of the resources that it needs to get them under control quickly. Guys?

BERMAN: All right, Lucy Kafanov in Amarillo, keep us posted there. And as Lucy noted, the Smokehouse Creek fire is just one of several fires burning now, that one alone, 500,000 acres, zero percent contained in the second largest in Texas state history.

Let's get to Derek Van Dam for an update on what we might see over the next few hours. Derek?

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, John, a half-a-million acres burned from this one fire that started on Monday, but really exploded overnight, 500,000 acres is the equivalent of burning the size of Manhattan 23 times. That puts it into perspective how large this fire is. You can see it from space. You can see it from satellite imagery. And I think what's important to know is this zero percent containment, extremely erratic wildfire behavior on the ground as we speak.

This information of 500,000 is new to us just within the past five minutes. So we actually have to update this graphic to show that the new placement of the Smokehouse Creek fire and Hutchinson County has bumped from the fifth largest in Texas history to the second largest. Those records go back to 1988, so several years. But look at this erratic and extreme fire behavior, literally jumping

over some of the roadways. Look at that flame, reaching the other side. So there is nothing to stop this fire. And there was actually a plane that was flying over the Texas panhandle overnight, and you saw the full scope of these fires burning out of control. This is really interesting as well. We came across this satellite imagery. This blue line, I'm depicting here is actually a cold front. And notice the hotspots, those are the ongoing fires across the Texas panhandle. The wind was blowing out of the west to the east at 50 miles an hour yesterday. Once that cold front came through, it changed the direction the wind from the north, and it allowed that fire to take advantage of the dry fuels on the ground and start more fires further south. So it made it that much more difficult to fight the fires on the ground. We heard the firefighters pulling back and retreating because of these erratic fire behaviors.

It will continue to be smoky in and around Amarillo today. You can imagine that dense fog and smoke we saw that Lucy shot just a moment ago. But what's interesting is we can actually forecast this out into the future. Notice the change in the wind direction, more of a southerly flow. So it'll take that smoke northward through the Oklahoma panhandle and further north. We're going to see temperatures warming backup with that southerly flow. So perhaps we reintroduce the potential of fire behavior and fire weather towards the weekend. That's something still to be considered. All right, John?

BERMAN: Some terrifying images there, but a really interesting and informative way of looking at it all. Derek Van Dam, thank you very much. Kate?

BOLDUAN: So this morning we're looking at a pivotal moment in the Republican led impeachment effort against President Biden. Hunter Biden, his son, is headed back to the Hill. This time he is going behind closed doors to take questions from lawmakers, some of the very same lawmakers moving to impeach his father.

CNN's Paula Reid on Capitol Hill for us for a look at what is going to happen. There's been such a lead up and back and forth to get to this point, Paula, what do you think is going to happen today?

PAULA REID, CNN SENIOR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Kate, this is a make or break moment for GOP lawmakers who so far had provided no clear evidence of their allegation that President Biden benefited from his son's foreign business dealings.

[08:10:00]

And Hunter's deposition today comes just two weeks after an informant at the heart of these allegations, who claimed that the Bidens received millions of dollars in foreign bribes was charged by the Justice Department with lying, with fabricating that story.

Now Republicans are trying to brush that off as they head into today's deposition. But Kate, we weren't even sure they were going to be able to ask Biden questions behind closed doors because since he received this request, Hunter and his lawyers have made it clear they wanted to testify publicly because they were concerned about selective leaks, and that GOP lawmakers would try to spin whatever he said.

So today's appearance, the fact that he is sitting for this deposition in private came after two significant concessions from Republicans. The first is that this deposition will not be filmed. Notable since other witnesses had their depositions filmed. And also there's the issue of the transcript. Now, we're told that both parties will receive it at the same time and it's going to be released to the public week expect very quickly, possibly even within 24 hours. Again, these were concessions made to allay these concerns about selective leaks.

But Kate, as we've seen over the past year or so, Hunter Biden with his new lawyer, Abbe Lowell and Kevin Morris, they have taken a much more aggressive approach to House Republicans, to Hunter's detractors. You have seen them show up unannounced on a Hill twice in the past few months as they were negotiating this appearance. And we'll see the approach they intend to take today.

BOLDUAN: Yes. It still remains a question, will we hear from Hunter Biden, his attorneys before they go in. I mean, all of this has been so kind of wait and see. We will do exactly that together today, this morning. It's good to see you, Paula. Thank you. John?

BERMAN: This morning, the first attempt by the Biden campaign to mend the frays in the coalition revealed in Michigan overnight. President Biden did win the Democratic primary easily, but more than 101,000 voters voted uncommitted, largely to protest U.S. support for Israel's war against Hamas. The new campaign response is, quote, "President Biden shares the goal of many of the folks who voted uncommitted, which has an end to the violence and a just and lasting peace. That is what he is working towards."

As for Donald Trump, while he is win in Michigan was his biggest primary victory yet, it is worth noting he still lost a greater share in his party and more votes in his party then President Biden did overnight.

With us now is CNN political commentator and co-founder and editor-in- chief of "The Dispatch," Jonah Goldberg. Jonah, let's look at this from a glass half empty perspective from both campaigns. Who would you like to be more or less this morning, President Biden, having lost 100,000 votes to not committed, or Donald Trump, who continues to lose hundreds of thousands of votes, albeit fewer percentage points that he did before, to Nikki Haley.

JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, it's a good way, it's a good way to ask the question, I got to say. I think Biden comes out marginally better if we're just confining things the significance of Michigan, right, because look, the people voting non-committed are uncommitted, are voting on an issue. They're very clear about that. They're honest about that. Nobody disputes that. And we can have arguments about the merits of the issue or the policies of the issue. But it's an issue. Biden can change the politics or his positions on an issue.

In the Republican primary, the issue is Donald Trump. And if there's one thing we know about Donald Trump is he can't change himself. And so it is more revealing of the divides in the Republican Party than it is revealing of the divides in the Democratic Party, the fundamental divides, right? If Biden changed his position tomorrow, he could get most of those non-committed people back. He would lose other people. But the point is, is he has maneuvering room. While Donald Trump, the issue is Donald Trump himself. And we know the guy can't change, he can't pivot to being presidential. He's a known quantity, and that's a really daunting prospect for Trump, I think.

BERMAN: Hearing from Democrats, what they see most concerned about isn't necessarily the Arab American vote per se, which I think they perhaps expected to have struggles with in Michigan you can overnight. But it's young people. It's the areas in and around University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Those counties, those college counties, if President Biden can't galvanize support among young voters, how much of a problem is that for Democrats in November?

BERMAN: Yes, I think that's a huge problem. Michigan has the most Arab Americans, Muslim Americans of any state. It's a very fairly concentrated population. It's one of the only states were Arab Americans and Muslim Americans outnumber Jewish Americans, for example. But young America is like in many ways the core of the Democratic coalition, particularly when you talk about the people with the passion, the organizers, the leaflet hander-outers, all those kinds of people, those are progressive college kids.

[08:15:00]

And he's in real trouble with those guys, and I suspect a lot of them will come home when you get closer to the election and Donald Trump is more the focus of the conversation, but if he can't shore that up, it's very difficult to see how he puts together a coalition in these swing states that he needs to win.

BERMAN: Jonah, I love history, and I love election's history more than anything, and I was fascinated to read a column you wrote comparing Nikki Haley to Pat Buchanan, which is something that I think on paper, not a lot of people would do. Why are you making that comparison?

GOLDBERG: Although, I did do it on paper. So look, I mean, in 1992, I'm old enough to remember Republicans, the pundits, the political class freaked out when Pat Buchanan got about thirty-eight, thirty- seven percent in the New Hampshire primary challenging an incumbent, President George HW Bush.

Buchanan stayed in the race to the end. He averaged about 22 percent of the Republican vote through all the primaries, and lots of people believe that Buchanan's primary challenge is what doomed George HW Bush's re-election efforts.

Similarly, in 1980, Ted Kennedy did something very similar with similar numbers to Jimmy Carter and he lost in 1980. The relevance here is Nikki Haley is in no way like Pat Buchanan in terms of her policies or her politics, but she is outperforming so far Patrick Buchanan in 1992. And lots of people, myself included, you know, almost every analyst I've seen has compared Trump to essentially a quasi-incumbent, hundred percent name ID, controls the party, ran as an incumbent, didn't do the debates.

Now obviously, he's not an actual incumbent. But he kind of serves as one in part because as a former president, who says he didn't lose the last election, the party just sort of rallied around him and Nikki's numbers, if Pat Buchanan's numbers were indicative of an incredibly weak incumbent in HW Bush, then Nikki Haley's numbers have to be pointing towards a certain weakness in Donald Trump even if he isn't a full-fledged incumbent.

BERMAN: Yes, one difference might be between 1980 Ted Kennedy and 1992 Pat Buchanan and today, I can't imagine Nikki Haley getting a speaking slot anywhere near the convention this time around this summer when it comes to pass.

GOLDBERG: She might have a food truck outside the convention, but no way in the convention.

BERMAN: She would be lucky to be speaking near that food truck.

Jonah Goldberg, great to talk to you this morning. Thank you very much -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Super interesting. It is good to have Jonah on.

He was supposed to be a star witness for defense attorneys trying to disqualify Fani Willis from the Georgia election subversion case against Trump. Why his testimony fell flat.

The mayor of New York City wants to make a major shift now in how the city handles undocumented immigrants potentially rolling back New York's sanctuary city status in part.

And the US Treasury cracking down on fraud now with a powerful new tool, of course, it is artificial intelligence.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:22:35]

BERMAN: This morning, the fallout from the testimony in the hearing that could determine whether the election subversion case against Donald Trump in Georgia goes forward. It has to do with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and whether she has been truthful about when her relationship with a lead prosecutor began.

Yesterday, a key witness said he simply did not know exactly when it began.

CNN's Zachary Cohen is with us this morning. What's the impact of that because everyone was waiting to hear whether this man was going to testify that he had some inside scoop that didn't come to pass.

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yes, John, the defense attorneys trying to get Fani Willis disqualified were visibly frustrated yesterday, as they questioned the witness that they billed as the person who was going to essentially testify that Fani Willis and Nathan Wade were lying about when their romantic relationship started.

That's a key part of this argument they are making as to why Fani Willis should be disqualified. They're trying to prove there was some sort of a conflict there.

But there's a very different story yesterday when Terrence Bradley got on the stand, he had amnesia, basically. He couldn't remember any details about when the relationship started. He couldn't remember any details about specific communications that he had.

And he even said that in text messages he exchanged with one of the defense attorneys, he was speculating when he said that the relationship started earlier than Nathan Wade and Fani Willis said it did.

Take a listen to this exchange between Bradley and Trump's lead attorney, Steve Sadow where he really pins him down on this speculating and you really hear the frustration in his voice.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE SADOW, ATTORNEY FOR DONALD TRUMP: Why would you speculate when she was asking you a direct question about when the relationship started?

TERRENCE BRADLEY, ATTORNEY: I have no answer for that.

SADOW: Except for the fact that you do in fact know when it started, and you don't want to testify to that in court. That's the best explanation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: So this would seem to undercut the effort to disqualify Willis. Obviously Bradley, not the witness, the defense attorneys thought he would be, but he did admit text messages into evidence that do show this exchange with one of the attorneys on the defense side. That could be a part of the consideration from Judge McAfee as he is ultimately going to have to make a decision.

The next step in this process comes on Friday when both sides are going to get to make their closing arguments. They can also raise the idea that some additional evidence should be admitted, and we're going to see what McAfee decides on that front. He's left the door open to potentially reopen evidence in this case if warranted and if it has a material impact on his decision making.

But he is not likely to rule from the bench on Friday, so we're still a week or two away probably from a decision on whether or not Fani Willis is going to remain on this case.

BERMAN: Friday will be a big day and we will see those arguments on camera as we have seen so much of these proceedings. All right, Zach Cohen, great to see you. Thank you very much.

So new this morning, smoking marijuana even if prescribed by your doctor, new information that it could hurt your heart health.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: This morning, New York City Mayor Eric Adams is calling for major changes to the city's sanctuary policies. He publicly endorsed the shift that could send undocumented immigrants who are accused of a crime into the hands of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers.

[08:30:21]