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House Requests Preservation of Phone Records; Rockets Fired at Kabul Airport; Ida Weakens to Tropical Storm. Aired 9:30-10a

Aired August 30, 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]

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: His children, Ivanka, Eric and Don Jr., as well as Don Jr.'s girlfriend and a member of the Trump campaign, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Lara Trump, who is, of course, the wife of Eric Trump.

JIM SCIUITTO, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.

NOBLES: So, at this point, this is just a request to preserve these records, Jim. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to ask for the records of every single one of these individuals. But it gives us a sense of where this investigation is headed.

SCIUTTO: Yes. I mean one notable detail from all this seems to be that there were Republican members of Congress calling the president, attempting to get him to call the crowd off. But one person notably absent from the list is House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Do we know why?

NOBLES: Yes, that certainly stands out. McCarthy is considered to be a very important part of this investigation. The committee chairman, Bennie Thompson, has not ruled out even calling him as a witness. But what we're told is that this this stage of the investigation, it is all focused on the rally itself. McCarthy was not involved in the rally. He didn't speak at the rally. He didn't encourage people to attend. So that's why we suspect that he is not in this initial group of phone records that they are asking to preserve.

Now, that doesn't mean that he couldn't he added at some point down the road. This is an evolving investigation. It could take a long time. So McCarthy could be included at some point. But at this stage of the investigation, he is not part of this initial list.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Ryan Nobles, good reporting. Thanks very much.

Joining me now to discuss legal implications, et cetera, CNN legal analyst Eli Honig.

Eli, good to have you on.

I mean first question here is access, right, because this is a demand to the phone companies, private companies, as opposed to the individuals, the lawmakers. Do the companies legally have to comply?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: They do, Jim.

Yes, so just so we're clear here, the type of information that lawmakers are looking at are what we call toll records.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HONIG: Meaning, you won't get the content of the conversations here, but you will get crucial information about who called who when exactly to the minute and how long those conversations took. That's really important to investigators because it will help you connect the dots in those key days and hours leading up to and during the rally and then the January 6th riot.

So the phone companies have really no dog in this fight. They are going to turn those records over unless somebody from the outside steps in and tries to stop it.

SCIUTTO: Yes, it's a good point because this is meta data, it's not content. It's not like there's transcripts of the calls. That can't happen domestically.

But it does give you the opportunity to then ask these lawmakers questions in sworn testimony. Say, OK, you've talked at this point when this was happening elsewhere. Question, of course, is, do those lawmaker, if they are summoned, subpoenaed, do they have to comply? Because we saw in the Trump administration so many subpoenas either fought, delayed or ignored.

HONIG: Yes, that's going to be a really interesting question, what happens if the committee subpoenas sort of its own, right?

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HONIG: If they subpoena Jim Jordan or Lauren Boebert or even Kevin McCarthy, are they going to fight back against it? Legally, I don't see a basis to do that. There's no executive privilege here. We're talking about Congress, right? So there's no way they can call on that to try to get out of that. Even conversations that may have happened between, let's say, Kevin McCarthy and the White House. That's not going to be subject to executive privilege because it's outside the executive branch. It's the legislative branch involved. All they really can do to avoid testifying, maybe there's political ways out of it, to leverage political muscle, but they can take the fifth.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HONIG: Anyone can take the fifth if they think they may have criminal liability. They're entitled to do that. But it sure does look terrible.

SCIUTTO: OK, you're a prosecutor. You can look at this like a prosecutor, perhaps get a sense of what the focus is here. Given that the focus of this initial request are people who are involved in that stop the steal rally as opposed to others who were not or came in later in the conversation, like a Kevin McCarthy, what does that tell you about the direction the investigation has taken?

HONIG: Yes, I think this is all connected and I think you want to look at the totality here.

But the focus on the rally tells me they want to know, what were the expectations for this rally? What were people in the White House saying was going to happen at this rally? What were they playing? How large did they think it was? Did they play with the timing for any reason to perhaps coincide with the counting of the electoral votes? I think those are the kind of questions that the investigators are look at from a sort of prosecutorial standpoint.

SCIUTTO: Understood.

Elie Honig, always good to have you on. Thank you.

HONIG: Thanks, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Breaking overnight, an attempted rocket attack on the airport in Kabul as we are just one day away from the deadline for U.S. troops, the final ones, to withdraw from the country. We're going to be live from there next.

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[09:39:14]

SCIUTTO: Well, this morning, ISIS-K is now claiming responsibility for an attempted rocket attack against Kabul airport overnight. That's a live picture from the airport there. In fact, we just saw a military jet take off. Video obtained by CNN shows the burned-out car that was apparently used as an improvised rocket launcher. President Biden has been briefed on the attack.

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh is live in Doha.

Nick, we had what the Pentagon says was an attempted suicide bombing yesterday. You had this rocket attack. Of course, we had the deadly attack on Marines and Afghans a couple of days ago now, a few days ago now. This is a sign of the danger that ISIS-K poses.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Yes, I mean, certainly the rocket attack today. Initial reports are blaming that on ISIS-K. Pictures of the scenes suggest they may have been launched out the back of a car in the direction of Hamid Karzai International Airport.

[09:40:06]

But the defenses that have been in place there for quite some time seemed to have dealt with those rockets, ISIS subsequently claiming responsibility for it saying it fired six Katyushas in that direction, Katyusha rockets.

You mentioned the attempted suicide bombing. I mean U.S. officials have said that that particular device was loaded and ready to go. And they referred to their strike on it as defensive, although it does appear to have killed a number of civilians as well according to a local journalist on the ground working for CNN.

But we're in the closing hours now here of this U.S. presence on the airport, clearly fraught, clearly aware of the ISIS threat whirling around it, and the possibility, too, that we've seen a large amount of U.S. aircraft traffic on open source planning in and out of that airport over the last few hours or so. And the clock very much ticking, Jim, as to when finally the last U.S. soldier leaves Afghanistan.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And as we note there in the banner, the defense system captured, intercepted those rockets as they were coming in.

So you mentioned this strike that took place yesterday, U.S. time, against what the Pentagon described at the time as suspected suicide bombers or a suspected vehicle-born IED. So that strike hit its target, but also killed civilians?

WALSH: That's our understanding at the moment. Initially the Pentagon said there was no indication of civilian casualties. They later released a statement saying there was the possibility and that they deeply regretted any potential loss of civilian life.

A local journalist on the scene says that nine, possibly 10 people, most from the same family, six of them children, were killed in that blast. The U.S. has said that actually what they think occurred was the explosion triggered a secondary explosion, which may have caused any further loss of life. But it's still obviously early days and still a lot more examination needs to occur around this.

But a lot of the local reporting there does suggest a significant civilian death toll, which I say, which CENTCOM statements have now gone from no indication to thinking it may be a possibility.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

WALSH: Really this defensive strike on a car in a compound there. It was initially thought there may have been more than one suicide bomber. Then I was told there may have been one suicide bomber. It's unclear if the car was intended as a car bomb or if the suicide bomber was simply going to travel in it. A lot of lack of clarity around this but some very clear reports from the scene that we saw a significant civilian casualty toll.

SCIUTTO: So as we were just about to come to you, Nick, our live picture from Kabul airport showed a U.S. military jet, looked like a C-17, taking off there. It's our understanding that evacuations of Afghans -- and there you go, taxiing down the runway -- has stopped. But U.S. soldiers are leaving. Where does the evacuation stand and where does the drawdown stand?

WALSH: Yes, it's hard to know each time you see one of these planes taxiing or landing. And as I've said, there's been a lot of traffic over the last four, five, six hours, including, in fact, a Qatari air force plane that landed and seemed to go to the civilian side of the airport. A lot of traffic. And it isn't really clear exactly what stage in the situation we are at.

I reported a number of days ago that I think the Americans were very keen not to get too close to the 31st of August. That's the deadline in which they're supposed to be out but I haven't really had a (INAUDIBLE) date whether it's the end of that day or the beginning of that day. But, frankly, given the perilous security situation on the ground, I can see all imperatives being on reducing the window for yet more risk against U.S. personnel there.

We heard the most recent figure, which I think put us to about 11:30 local time here, 3:00 a your time, Jim, suggesting that 1,200 evacuees have been taken off the airport in the previous 24 hours before that. But that's entirely possible given the volume of air traffic we have, indeed, seen.

But now, of course, it is all about reducing the military presence safely. And I would suggest as quickly as possible, frankly. We are in the closing hours of daylights here in Kabul. And then, of course, there will be that moment when essentially the last troops move toward their departure aircraft and there has to be someone to take over security of that airport and it may end up being the Taliban.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Well, one thing I notice as that plane was taking off was a very steep climb and that's typically what they do because the area around the airport is not secure. They do that to get at altitude as quickly as they can and out of danger of anything that can be fired at it.

Nick Paton Walsh, in Doha, thanks so much.

Still ahead this hour, Louisiana dealing with a double punch, hospitals overwhelmed with COVID patients even before the hurricane struck. How doctors there are racing to save lives in the midst of a storm.

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[09:49:14]

SCIUTTO: Ida is now a tropical storm after making landfall as a category four hurricane, bringing just punishing wind and rain to Gulf Coast communities in Louisiana and Mississippi. But even though Ida has weakened, the storm is still dangerous as it sifts over those areas there.

CNN meteorologist Chad Myers has been following.

All right, so what's it doing right now? I know it's dumping a lot of rain in eastern Louisiana.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Right. Eastern Louisiana, parts of Mississippi and now our first flash flood warning for western panhandle of Florida, north of Pensacola. These are tropical rains, Jim. These are rains like when you walk outside, you're just going to get wet in one second. There's so much water falling out of the sky.

The other thing it's doing, it's making tornados.

[09:50:00]

There are 20, though, right here, 20 flash flood warnings in effect right now. And a lot of that was the rain that fell overnight. But there's still more rain coming down right now.

There's two real stripes of rain. One here and one here. One running through Biloxi and one running there about Pensacola. Any time one of the bigger cells in the stripe comes on shore, it can be rotating. I've seen a number of rotations today. I'm not sure if we had any confirmed tornados or not. Nothing so far. But there could be water spouts that run on shore and that's why the tornado watch is in effect.

So, here you go. Here is your radar. It is till raining in Jackson. Raining north of there. And these are heavy rains as well, even on up into Arkansas. Memphis, you're going to get some rainfall. And then the Gulf moisture is still being sucked into this storm because it still has this rotation.

Now, there's not much rain on this side because there's a north wind and it's a drier wind. But here on the east side, where the winds coming in off of the Gulf of Mexico, that is still a very tropical flow. It is just like walk outside and you can feel the air.

So, here we go, from Louisville, about 25 miles per hour, you're kind of -- to the south of you, but you still could see some rain showers. Rain all the way up into Pennsylvania, as far west probably still, two to four inches in Louisiana and Mississippi and then the flash flood watches are in effect. And that's going to be the story for the next couple days.

Here is the radar. What the computer thinks the radar is going to look like. There you go. We move out to tomorrow, into tomorrow afternoon. We go here, there's 6:00 tomorrow morning and then into Nashville, into Charleston, even Cincinnati will pick up some of the rainfall with this.

This is going to be still a heavy rain-maker. Look at wind, though, we had yesterday, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Wow.

MYERS: Port Fourchon, 153. Now, I've seen a picture of a little weather instrument that shows a wind gust of 172. But if it was on a ship and it was 50 feet high on a mast, that doesn't count. But we have seen numbers even higher than this.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

MYERS: So, yes, this was a category four for sure hurricane, no question about that. Sometimes you go, really, was it a two, because it seemed like a one. No, this was a four. SCIUTTO: Yes, it's like a giant, miles wide tornado with winds like

that.

Chad Myers, thanks very much.

MYERS: Your welcome.

SCIUTTO: Well, the generators at one Louisiana hospital, they failed during the height of the storm last night. Staff had to scramble to relocate patients. The CEO of Thibodaux Regional Health System, Greg Stock, spoke to CNN this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GREG STOCK, CEO, THIBODAUX REGIONAL HEALTH SYSTEM: During the storm yesterday, two of our five generators automatically stopped working. And they serve the area critical access, critical care areas with one of them.

What happened, as far as we can tell, is they actually were working just fine. That 100 plus mile an hour wind, though, was blowing in just the right direction where the exhaust of the hot air out of the -- out of that area where the generators were located did not -- did not occur. And, you know, when a generators are on full mode, they create a lot of heat.

What happened, it just heated that room up so much you -- that the generators shut off on their own. So we had to cool them down, we had to figure out how -- and, of course, we don't control the wind -- how to get the movers (ph) right, things like that.

In the meantime, we had these patients, a good number of them were COVID patients and intensive care unit type patients, some of them fairly young but very sick, that we had to do something with. And so we acted very quickly.

And you described it. It was an amazing thing to see. I would say our -- I was here in this hospital during Katrina and it reminded me of that. You know, you plan for things, back-up generators, beyond what you need, executed our plan really well over time, but here is -- here is a curveball that comes in and then it's how good your people are and how well they work together.

So we have lots of really great staff that worked in -- the intensive care unit type of staff were joined by other nurses, respiratory therapists, physicians, so on and the decision-making process unfolded right there. I watched it. Part of it.

And moving patients down the stairwells is kind of one of the last things you want to do. But there was another section of the hospital in our operating room areas and recovery room areas, these old terms, that was functional, we got them there. We got all the equipment. It's incredible, incredible act of teamwork.

All of those patients are good. It's amazing -- just amazing to go in there and see that. (END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Yes, taking care of the sick in the midst of a storm. It is not easy. The death toll at this point from Ida stands at one person. More than a million households without power this morning. Many more effected by that after Hurricane Ida began pounding Louisiana and is still causing damage as a tropical storm.

[09:55:03]

CNN has team coverage across the area. We'll bring it to you live, next.

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SCIUTTO: A very good Monday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

Some big damage in Louisiana as Ida has been tearing through the state for 24 hours now. First as a category four -- that's very powerful -- hurricane, now as a tropical storm. Homes are flooded. Roofs have been ripped off. Some people trapped as the waters continue to rise. That's a real concern now.

[10:00:00]

Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng said, quote, the worst case scenario seems to have happened.