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Confirmation Battles for Key Cabinet Nominees; Senate Holds Hearing on Cyberattack on Federal Agencies; One Year Anniversary of Arbery's Death. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired February 23, 2021 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Well, later today, President Biden will host a bilateral meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The two leaders will meet virtually, of course, because of the pandemic. They are expected to unveil a new roadmap for renewing collaboration between the two countries on big issues, including climate change, the economy and the ongoing COVID response.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, a Zoom summit, I guess.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: But there are some real points of contention between the two countries, including cross-border trade, but also the cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Canada not happy about that. Plus, Trudeau is expected to press the president to make more COVID vaccines available for Canadians, reaching out for help across the border.

In the next hour, Republicans plan to go on the attack during another confirmation hearing. This for President Biden's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

HARLOW: Xavier Becerra is facing some tough criticism, particularly from Republican lawmakers, in part because of his lack of experience in health care. They've been talking about this, Lauren, since his nomination.

Lauren Fox joins us on Capitol Hill.

And he's not the only one right now. There's three of them really facing an uphill confirmation battle.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's exactly right. And in just a little while, we expect that Becerra is going to be in the hot seat, in part because he really represents some of the key differences that Republicans and Democrats have on the issue of health care and on the issue of abortion. Expect that those are going to be the things that Republicans are really going to be grilling him on in the next couple of hours.

The other thing to remember is the Senate has a very narrow majority to -- for pushing through these nominees. Democrats have to be united. And that's exactly the problem with the president's nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Neera Tanden, of course, coming under scrutiny for some of the tweets that she has had attacking Republicans over the last couple of years.

And I want to read one of them specifically to you. It says, why do people take Susan Collins' statements that she was undecided seriously. Like if you saw Brett Kavanaugh's attack on other senators as qualifying to be on the Supreme Court, this was never a real question for you.

The issue that Tanden is facing is that Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from the state of West Virginia, said on Friday he would not support her nomination. If no Republican comes forward and Susan Collins, who was mentioned in this tweet, has said she will not support Tanden, that means that Tanden does not have the votes to get confirmed in the U.S. Senate. That gives you a sense of how these nominees that come in, they have to perform in these confirmation hearings. They have to do well, and they can't have extraneous other issues because there is such a narrow majority for Democrats to move these nominees forward.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: So Joe Manchin's departure on Tanden was, you know -- might have been the nail in the coffin here. When you look at the Becerra nomination, but also Deb Haaland for interior secretary, where there are issues about her standing in the way of the fossil fuel industry, I mean are Democrats expected to stick together?

FOX: Well, exactly. And I think one of the key questions is the question she is going to face when she comes before the Energy Committee in just a little while. Senator Joe Manchin chairs that committee. He's going to have some tough questions for her about what she believes to be the ability of fossil fuel industries to drill on these federal lands.

And, I mean, one of the things to remember about Deb Haaland was, she was a supporter of the green new deal. Of course, that is a flash point for conservatives. That is something that they frequently attack Democrats for, even Democrats who weren't co-sponsors on that bill. Haaland is one of those Democrats in Congress who was supportive of the green new deal. That is going to be the cornerstone of Republican attacks against her today. And it's going to be something that even Democrats are watching very closely in this hearing for her nomination.

HARLOW: Lauren, you are going to have a really busy day. Thank you for updating us on all of it before it gets started.

Well, a preliminary NTSB investigation now reveals they think it was metal fatigue, also known as wear and tear, that at least contributed to the catastrophic engine failure on board that United Airlines flight from Colorado to Hawaii over the weekend.

SCIUTTO: An initial examination of the Pratt and Whitney engine showed that two fan blades were fractured. The remaining blades exhibited damage to the tips and leading edges. New images also shows a hole that ripped through the main body of the plane after the engine failure.

Boeing has now recommended suspending the use of 777s that have the Pratt and Whitney 4000 engine. United Airlines has already pulled them following the incident. We should note, it was not the first incident with this model jet and these engines. So a lot of questions there for Boeing, particularly following the 737 Max issues.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: So how did hackers get into at least nine federal agencies and dozens of private businesses? And how can the U.S. stop it from happening again? Can they? The Senate Intelligence Committee will try to get some answers today. We're going to speak to a former Homeland Security official, a senior one in the Trump administration, about this, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:39:17]

SCIUTTO: All right, so there's a lot happening on Capitol Hill today and it's important. Today the Senate Intelligence Committee is holding the first major congressional hearing on the massive -- and it was massive, it's actually ongoing -- cyberattack now known as SolarWinds. It is suspected by U.S. intelligence that Russian hackers are behind it. The panel will hear testimony from the heads of SolarWinds, FireEye, a cybersecurity firm, Microsoft and CrowdStrike, another one. Their companies and products were either a victim of the attack or helped respond to it, identify it.

HARLOW: Our Alex Marquardt has been following this closely and has more on what is now the largest cyberattack in U.S. history.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The hack took almost a year to uncover. When it was discovered, its complexities stunned the world's most experienced experts.

[09:40:04]

ANNE NEUBERGER, DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: This is challenging. This is a sophisticated actor who did their best to hide their tracks. We believe it took them months to plan and execute this compromise. It will take us some time to uncover this layer by layer.

MARQUARDT: Anne Neuberger was just named the White House's top cyber official, inheriting a monumental challenge from the Trump administration, dealing with the fallout of an unprecedented breach of government and private systems that is believed to still be ongoing.

NEUBERGER: We believe we're in the beginning stages of understanding the scope and scale and we may find additional compromises. MARQUARDT: At least nine federal agencies and departments were

breached, Neuberger said. She wouldn't say which ones but they include justice, state, energy, commerce and homeland security. Around 100 private companies as well.

The culprit believed to be Russian intelligence, which used a variety of tactics but primarily struck by building a back door into a software update on a platform made by the company SolarWinds, which went out to 18,000 customers, including many in the U.S. government, as well as Microsoft.

BRAD SMITH, PRESIDENT, MICROSOFT: When we analyzed everything that we saw at Microsoft, we asked ourselves, how many engineers have probably worked on these attacks? And the answer we came to was, well, certainly more than 1,000.

MARQUARDT: The hackers are still believed to be lurking in the systems. The White House says its investigation will take months but some experts say it could take longer to fully grasp.

The private sector will be key in uncovering the damage as they were in discovering the hack. Today, the heads of SolarWinds and Microsoft will testify in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who will look to them for answers, as well as to the CEOs from top cybersecurity firms FireEye and CrowdStrike.

SEN. ROB PORTMAN (R-OH): Congress and the executive branch have failed to prioritize cybersecurity and now we find ourselves vulnerable and exposed. We have to do better than this.

MARQUARDT: Now the question of how to respond. Some see it as cyber espionage, which the U.S. also does abroad. Others see it as an attack that demands a response.

The Biden administration says it's weighing how to respond but that it's a question of when, not if.

JAKE SULLIVAN, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: And you'll be hearing more about this in short order. We're not talking about months from now, we're talking about weeks from now, that the United States will be prepared to take the first steps in response to SolarWinds.

MARQUARDT: Alex Marquardt, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: All right, we're joined now by Elizabeth Neumann. She's a former assistant secretary of Homeland Security during the Trump administration.

Elizabeth, can you tell us what we know now to the best of your knowledge about how broad and how damaging this was? I mean this is a new kind of attack, a supply chain attack that gets into the kind of like workings of the software and, therefore, kind of infects everybody who uses it.

Do we even know the scale of the damage?

ELIZABETH NEUMANN, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF COUNTERTERRORISM AT DHS: I don't think we know yet. I think you have some really amazing, smart people working night and day to try to unpack what we saw unfurl last year. But there is -- you know, I think that when something like this happens, it's helpful to look backwards and say for 20 years we -- we have heard from cyber experts warning that something like this was going to happen. And we, the U.S. government, tend to be fairly slow about addressing our vulnerabilities because there's cost associated with it. So it's -- there's been no shortage of recommendations about how to be better prepared, how to bolster our lines of defense and, you know, sadly, we tend to wait until an event like the -- like cyber Solarium (ph) -- or, sorry, an event like what happened with this -- this hack before we actually implement the recommendations that have been made over decades.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: So, I mean, that's a really important point that you say we're sort of slow to respond. Like wait for something catastrophic to happen and then you respond.

But then there's the question of what the response is, Elizabeth. And David Sanger, who we have on this program a lot, a journalist at "The Times," you know, pointed out right after this attack, like, what else can you do to actually mitigate it? If sanctions haven't worked that well, then what? Like, what would work?

NEUMANN: And it's a fair question. I think part of the problem of what we have attempted to do over the last four years is that we haven't actually taken Russian -- Russia aggression seriously. Lots of reasons perhaps why, but you have a different president now in the Oval Office who, I think, will be much more forceful in addressing cyberattacks. I think they're still working through to confirm and reconfirm attribution of who is at fault here. It seems to be Russia.

But, you know, certainly four years of not addressing Russia head on has allowed them to be more aggressive than perhaps they would have been if we had taken the first major hack that they did on our election in 2016 more seriously.

[09:45:16]

SCIUTTO: The Trump administration, and you know this better than me, did do something that previous administrations have not. And that is further enable cyber command to carry out offensive operations and to plant kind of, if you want to call them sleeper cells or whatever out there as a kind of like, you mess with us, we're going to mess with you. But that didn't work to deter Russia either. You know, I just wonder, what's left in the quiver?

NEUMANN: You know, there are probably more things than we don't -- than we know in the public's eye in terms of what's in the quiver. But you can't really underestimate, you know, as great as those tools are and as innovative as our intelligence community can be in developing new ways to go after enemies in classified ways, you can't step away from the fact that we have not held Russia accountable. We have not developed the coalitions. They have been aggressive in any number of fronts, not just cyber, but the poisoning of Navalny.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

NEUMANN: Before that there was the poisoning in the U.K. They are reckless on the world stage and we have to start holding them accountable, like-minded countries coming together and saying, no, you've crossed too many lines and there will be consequences for that.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Yes, instead of saying maybe they should join the G-7 again or something like that.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

NEUMANN: Sure.

HARLOW: Thanks, Elizabeth, very much.

A devastating reality for the mother of Ahmaud Arbery. Of course you know the young man who was chased down and killed while just jogging. In the year since his death, there may be some policy changes, but what about real justice? You'll hear from his mother in her own words, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:51:24]

HARLOW: Well, this afternoon, officials in Aurora, Colorado, will hold a news conference on an independent report that has concluded that police said that there is no legal basis to stop, frisk or restrain this young black man who later died after his encounter with officers and paramedics. The city commissioned this independent investigation into 23-year-old Elijah McClain's death. You'll remember this happened in August of 2019. He was walking home from a convenience store when an officer stopped him, based on a 911 call about a man that, quote, looked sketchy. That's it. The report says that officer placed his hands on McClain within ten seconds of leaving his patrol car.

SCIUTTO: Later, the officers claimed the 140-pound McClain resisted and had, quote, superior strength. He was wrestled to the ground, put in a neck hold, given an injection of ketamine that the report says was, quote, grossly inaccurate and inflated based on McClain's size. He had a heart attack on the way to the hospital and was declared brain dead three days later. The D.A. did not charge the officers involved.

Elijah McClain's parents say the report proves their son was an innocent victim and that the police and medics involved in his death should be held accountable.

Later today, in Waynesboro, Georgia, family and friends will hold a candlelight vigil to mark the one year anniversary of the death of Ahmad Arbery. The killing of the 25-year-old unarmed black man, authorities say was chased by three white men, gunned down. All he was doing was jogging through a neighborhood.

HARLOW: And still no trial date has been set for the two men. Obviously, they are awaiting a trial but Ahmaud Arbery's family is extremely frustrated, saying justice has yet to be served.

Let's go to our colleague Martin Savidge.

Martin, good morning to you.

For the first time we are hearing from Arbery's mother.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

Yes, I -- we came back down to Glynn County here to try to figure out just where does this case stand one year later. And as you've already pointed out, we have no trial date. The three suspects remain in the Glynn County Detention Center here. They've been denied bond and they've entered pleas of not guilty.

But we don't know when they're going to be put on trial. That's due to COVID, of course. There are no jury trials currently taking place in Georgia. It could change in March or April. If so, maybe, maybe by the end of the year.

There's also been another D.A. assigned to the case. A district attorney I'm talking about. On its fifth D.A. in this case. So that's raised some concern of continuity.

And, finally, I'll also point out there's been changes outside of the courtroom. Georgia didn't have a hate crimes law when Ahmaud Arbery was killed. It does now and it was passed with bipartisan support. And just last week the governor of Georgia announced that he is fighting against or wanting to overhaul Georgia's Citizen's arrest bill that dates back to the civil war, which some have used as justification. So there has been a lot of change and I talked to Ahmaud Arbery's mother about the progress that has been made and also how she's feeling.

Here's the answers to both of those questions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WANDA COOPER-JONES, AHMAUD ARBERY'S MOTHER: To be honest with you, Ahmaud is the last thing I think about at night and the first thing I think about each morning.

I'm sorry, I have to lose my son. I'm sorry life has to be taken to get change. But I'm thankful for that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAVIDGE: So she understands that there has been some good. But, of course, progress is not justice.

[09:55:01] And justice is what she seeks in this case.

We should also point out that the federal probe continues to try to see if there were civil rights violations in Ahmaud Arbery's death. It's going to be a difficult day for many here, but none more so than Ahmaud Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones.

Poppy and Jim.

HARLOW: That's exactly right. That's exactly right, Martin. We're so glad you are still on this story.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: That family deserves justice. Thank you, Martin.

SCIUTTO: Well, top of the hour, lawmakers will hold their first hearing on the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last month. Why such a massive security failure. The search for answers begins next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Top of the hour now. Lots of news. I'm Jim Sciutto.

HARLOW: And I'm Poppy Harlow. We're so glad you're with us.

[10:00:00]

Breaking right now, the first hearing on the deadly U.S. Capitol insurrection is about to begin right there at the scene of the crime on Capitol Hill.