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Senate Confirms Ketanji Brown Jackson As Supreme Court Justice; U.N. General Assembly Suspends Russia From Human Rights Council; Curfews Around Bucha To Clear Mines, Curb Looting; NATO Meets To Confirm Sustained Support For Ukraine; G-7 Foreign Ministers Condemn Russian Atrocities Committed In Bucha; Justice Department Investigating Handling Of White House Records Taken To Mar-A-Lago After Trump Left Office. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired April 07, 2022 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: I think she has family that is in law enforcement. She is a mother. She is married. I believe she has a relative who had a brush with law enforcement.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Her uncle, I believe, is imprisoned.

There are all sorts of things beyond just obviously her color that makes her representative of different American families.

LAURA COATES, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: I mean, you've just described the idea of a multidimensional human being.

And guess what? As much as we think about the ways in which we look at our laws, in the black and white context, in a very myopic viewpoint, we're actually talking about laws that are far more comprehensive and have an impact collectively on multidimensional people.

And so we want to have a judge who is on the bench at every level, by the way, and she has served at every level, somebody who actually can bring that wherewithal.

Because frankly, objectivity and impartiality does not require that you have had your head in the sand as an ostrich your entire life. You've seen nothing but roses and tasted wine.

Impartiality and objectivity require that you have lived in the world among the people of the United States of America and beyond. And you understand the ways in which the law operates and the Constitution can be interpreted.

That's as much a part of one's impartiality, their experience, as their ability to understand the Constitution. And I think she was very eloquent in her confirmation process about that.

Now, you recall, they tried to pigeonhole her into a notion of what her judicial philosophy might be. And she talked about, I shed all preconceived notions and I approach the case with the facts in mind and of course the law.

That's a hell of a judicial philosophy that everyone actually should have.

But I tell you, today, in the image you just described, Alisyn and Victor, excuse me, the idea of watching people not convey the respect of even having the final tally.

I mean, we're all -- a lot of people in this country haven't traveled a lot over the past several years, but we're traveling a lot now. And you're telling me that everybody have a flight at the very same time? Did everybody have a train to catch, a car outside waiting, a subway that they could not miss? No.

That in itself was a statement to demonstrate that they did not feel that this particular confirmation was worthy of the same level of respect as other votes that are cast.

And that is quite biting, first of all, in this nation. It's also quite telling.

But at the end of the day, remember, these nine Supreme Court justices will have the opportunity to rule on some of the most impactful and important cases of our lifetime and their children's lifetime and their children's lifetime.

And let's hope that they don't either, A, phone it in or leave the room because somebody disagrees with how they actually rule.

BLACKWELL: Gloria, let me bring that point to you. And we've just learned that President Biden, Vice President Harris, and soon to be -- we have to be careful what we call her now. She's no longer just Judge Jackson.

CAMEROTA: She is until she's sworn in.

BLACKWELL: Yes. Soon to be Justice Jackson.

Gloria, we're hearing they're going to make some remarks tomorrow.

The political potency of a confirmation of a justice, an appointment to the court, for any president, but especially this president.

BORGER: Well, it's very potent. As Alisyn pointed out, this isn't really going to change the ideology of the court, because it's a Democrat replacing a Democrat.

But Supreme Court justices are very political right now. And looking back to 2005, Justice Roberts, who no one would consider a liberal by any means, got 22 Democrats to vote for him. She got three Republicans.

And one thing I noticed, as you did, too, Victor, was that Republicans, by and large, could not leave that chamber quickly enough. And I think it was rude.

And I think it was rude that rand Paul was late. Maybe he had a late flight, so we'll give him that excuse.

But I mean, the fact -- and Ali and our hill team is reporting that Lindsey Graham wasn't wearing the required tie, so he had to vote from outside the chamber in the cloak room. OK.

But this is a moment in history, and you ought to show up whether you agree with the outcome or not. You need to pay this woman the respect that she is due. And you need to do that for any Supreme Court nominee.

And let me just add here that she is very popular in the country. This is not somebody with a 20 percent rating.

People saw how graceful she was under pressure. And they decided they liked her when she was accused of horrendous things. And they decided, you know what, she can be a Supreme Court justice.

[14:35:01]

And so I think the public was against those people who decided they couldn't stay in that chamber. And this may boomerang for them.

But at the very least, even if you disagree with the result, you can honor her achievement. And they couldn't stay to do that.

BLACKWELL: All right. Manu Raju, Joan Biskupic, Laura Coates, Gloria Borger, Natasha Alford, thank you all.

CAMEROTA: Great to get your perspectives.

Now to this. A senior Ukrainian official says the most-dire situation in that country is now in the east. There's a build-up of Russian forces and heavy fighting that's forcing thousands to flee their homes.

CNN takes you on one of the trains trying to evacuate scores of people now from that region.

BLACKWELL: And the West is putting on a united front, isolating Russia today. NATO members holding a key meeting to show their support for Ukraine.

And the U.N. votes to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council. The impact of that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:40:22]

BLACKWELL: The United Nations just suspended Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council for gross and systematic violations of human rights.

Now, this ejection is the first of its kind in more than a decade. It's in response to the Russian military's wanton mass killing of civilians in Bucha. But as the world further isolates Russia, Vladimir Putin's military

continues to wage war, especially in the east. The fighting there's escalating in the battle for Donetsk and the Luhansk regions.

America's top general, Mark Milley, said today Ukrainians are in for a long slog ahead in its eastern part and beyond.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. MARK MILLEY, CHAIRMAN, U.S. JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: The rest of Ukraine is still a battlefield, because there's air and missile strikes that still go on, and you know, Russian Special Operations forces still operating in some of those areas. So it is clearly still a combat zone in the rest of Ukraine as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Ukraine's foreign minister says the conflict will remind people of World War II with large operations and the involvement of thousands of tanks, armored vehicles, planes, and artillery.

CAMEROTA: We have a graphic video warning here, because we are about to show you new images of what the Russians did in Borodianka, a Kyiv suburb. And like Bucha, it is the site of scattered bodies of civilians that show signs of torture.

CNN has obtained video of the actual killing of one couple in Kyiv.

This video is obviously graphic and disturbing.

There's drone footage, and it shows the husband emerging from the car and, less than two seconds later, he has raised his hands, both hands in the air, but he is killed.

That man's name is Maxim Iovanka (ph). His wife, Simea (ph) was also killed. Their family confirmed their identities to CNN.

And their 6-year-old son was in the car when this happened. We're told the Russians took the boy and a family friend and later released them.

We're going to go now to CNN's Nima Elbagir, in Lviv, western Ukraine.

Nima, today, Bucha is under a curfew. What do we know that's happening there?

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN: Well, we know that Bucha has been essentially contained and cordoned off for many reasons.

Among them, the opportunity to carry out forensic investigations to try and isolate much of that evidence, much of what remains on the ground. There's also concern that there could be elements of unrest there.

But when you move further east from Bucha, Alisyn, that's when you really get a broader sense of the infliction point that is really turning a corner across this conflict in Ukraine, which is Russian forces relying on their safe staging grounds within Russia's border itself.

When you look at the map and you're looking towards eastern Ukraine, where, as you said, senior U.S. military have been ringing alarms and the Ukrainian officials here on the ground have been begging civilians to leave that eastern border with Russia for a few days now, now we're seeing why.

Our investigative team has been tracking ordinances and weaponry used by Russia from within its territory across in Kharkiv. And that ordinance, that weaponry, comfortably gives them the ability to hit and hit hard. And that is what we've been seeing, Alisyn.

And the sense that many of those we are speaking to give us, and it's very clear that the working assumption has to be that Russia is seeking to connect Kharkiv, so close to its border, down towards those so-called Russian-backed statelets, like Donetsk and Luhansk, further down.

And we're hearing that Ukrainians are mobilizing. They are regrouping along that key highway, along the east.

With Russia being able to comfortably continue to launch these attacks, there's a real fear that, for civilians, it will only get much worse -- Alisyn, Victor?

BLACKWELL: Nima, Russia has been suspended from the Human Rights Council. What do you know about the response from Russia?

ELBAGIR: We've been hearing from some of those who actually voted to suspend Russia. And the sense we're getting is really one of fear.

Russia circulated a note ahead of the vote, which was shared with CNN, which threatened that, even an abstention, not just a threat against Russia, but even abstention would be seen as an unfriendly gesture.

And many of those we're speaking to, the diplomatic representatives in Geneva, say they're worried that, at the moment, there's a unified front, there's this U.S.-led, U.S.-supported push to unify the world against Russian aggression.

[14:45:04]

But what happens next? What happens when Russia remembers who stood with and against them?

And that concern is against the backdrop of the fact that the U.S. is seeking to lead on a moral basis when it itself isn't part of the International Criminal Court. The United States is not a signatory to the statute.

So there's concern about the stability of the moral ground beneath the United States' feet at this moment in time -- Alisyn and Victor?

CAMEROTA: Nima, thank you very much for your reporting on the ground for us.

So, NATO leaders met today and pledged to keep sending aid to Ukraine.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Ukraine's foreign minister and said the international community must assume that Russia is continuing to commit multiple atrocities.

BLACKWELL: Ukrainian leaders said, in order to beat Putin, they need NATO to raise its aid level up to a new level, especially when it comes to weapons.

Nic Robertson, CNN's international diplomatic editor, is in Brussels.

Nic, what came out of today's discussions?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Well, even a few days ago, there was public discussion by NATO officials about supplying tanks and armored vehicles to the Ukrainian military forces.

That wasn't in the secretary-general's readout. Secretary of State Antony Blinken didn't get into specifics either.

The real concern of NATO officials and, obviously, Ukrainians is that Russia is really regrouping and trying to push back and take those territories in the east and south of Ukraine.

And, as they are in Mariupol, flattening the cities, we know that if Russia wants to be able to control the territory that it is getting -- that it is taking militarily, it's going to need large numbers to control large populations.

What the Russians are showing here is that they're willing to destroy cities, essentially, to make them uninhabitable for people to go back to and, therefore, easier for Russia to control with fewer forces going forward.

And that was what the Ukrainian foreign minister was trying to press and impress upon NATO foreign ministers, this sense of urgency, that the need is now. You have to support us now.

Because once the buildings are gone, and populations are forced out, even if they're able to fight back, it's very hard to keep a presence there.

So, I think one of the takeaways from the meeting here today was we didn't get specifics about what weapons systems are going to be -- are going to be supplied.

And I think that's part tactical, but it's also NATO trying not to escalate further direct tensions with Russia.

But we were assured that NATO is giving the Ukrainians what they think that they need to fight in a timely fashion.

BLACKWELL: Nic Robertson, for us in Brussels, thank you.

CAMEROTA: We have another graphic video warning for you. These images come out of Bucha, Ukraine. These are the images that have shocked and horrified people all over the world.

They're the bodies of civilians and they're left scattered in the streets. They were left behind after Russian troops withdrew from that town.

The G-7 foreign ministers today jointly condemned these atrocities.

And one investigator in the town explains what evidence he is looking for as he investigates these alleged Russian war crimes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD WEIR, RESEARCHER, CRISIS & CONFLICT DIVISION, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: There was a body that was here, and I'm trying to look for any physical evidence as to how she was killed or where she was killed from.

What we're seeing on the ground here are a few casings from bullets, a number of different hits on the -- on the steel sheeting, which look like many of the rounds were coming into this yard or coming from this direction.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Joining us now from Kyiv is that Human Rights Watch investigator, Richard Weir.

Richard, thank you so much for making time for us.

I want to talk about what you saw in Bucha, because all of us have seen the atrocities but we've only seen them on video. We've seen them from 7,000 miles away.

And so when you got to that town and started walking through the town, what was that experience like?

WEIR: Right, well, I mean, I think the images don't even really do the situation justice. As you walk through the town, particularly the street that has now become infamous because of the number of dead bodies strewn across it, even as you walk to the left or to the right, you find more bodies.

In every apartment structure that we walked to, nearly every single one, there's bodies strewn about in shallow graves or sometimes in apartment buildings themselves on the upper floors.

[14:49:58]

It's really -- I think -- it's as if the entire town, or large portions of it, are a crime scene. It's very difficult to walk around and not find some place affected by the fighting and the killing perpetrated by Russian forces when they occupied the city of Bucha.

Richard, it's almost impossible to imagine how you sift through a crime scene like that but that's what you're trying to do. In the first video we showed of you, you were describing you had come

upon the body of a woman and you were trying to determine, I think, how she was killed. How do you go about doing that?

WEIR: It was a very meticulous process. A lot is evaluating evidence and materials. So that's what we're seeing on the ground. Some is what we've been seeing through photos and videos, trying to take and collect everything from the scene that we can visually and otherwise.

This involves taking a position of if it's somebody who has been killed, the position of the body, looking at other physical evidence that's around. Bullet holes or possibly holes caused by shrapnel or other fragments from weapons. It's about looking at the entire scene.

And then one of the most important things is speaking to the witnesses. And oftentimes, the witnesses of the crimes are the individuals who were related.

And I've talked to a number of different family members of those that have been killed, to wives of killed men, to the fathers of men who have had to bury in their home yard, burying your best friend, dragging him from a basement, his bloody body.

And one of the most horrific things about all of this is that people are concerned that these bodies have been booby trapped as Russian forces have fled.

So this creates even more complication with respect to collecting and preserving evidence.

CAMEROTA: My gosh, Richard, it's just hard to even get our heads around everything you just described.

We saw a different video of you. It looks like you're picking up a shell casing of some kind. We see you taking a picture of it.

When you gather this evidence, what do you do with it?

My larger question is, from where we sit, do we still need more evidence of these Russian atrocities? How can we be debating whether they are war crimes?

We see civilian bodies that have shot execution style. We see hands tied behind their back. We see maternity wards being bombed and pediatric hospitals.

Why do you need so much evidence still?

WEIR: Well, one of the things we're looking for in the specific evidence is to understand as much as we can.

If it's things like munitions, a lot of times, we can take specific information that is printed on munitions in order to try to understand where it came from, perhaps who might have used it, when it was manufactured and how it ended up in the place that it ended up.

So there's a lot of information that we can collect visually from the various pieces of physical evidence that lay around the scenes.

What do we need in order to think about this as a war crime to establish there's a war crime? It's a lot.

In order to have accountability to these war crimes that means assigning responsibility to the individuals who committed them, who directed them, who aided, assisted, or abetted their commission, and that requires as much information.

It's about putting all of the pieces together. It's about interviewing the right people. It's about collecting the right physical evidence. And ultimately, it's about finding out who is responsible.

Not just that Russian forces are responsible but the individuals who can be held responsible for the crimes committed against individual people, against husbands, wives, and children.

And that's why it's important to gather and to keep gathering, to keep preserving and keep collecting this evidence so that it, one day, can be used at a trial in a prosecution that will hopefully help stem the tide of these horrific abuses.

CAMEROTA: Richard, you're doing such staggering, important work. Thank you for explaining all of that to us.

[14:54:48]

BLACKWELL: The U.S. Justice Department has begun investigating the handling of White House records taken to Mar-a-Lago after former President Trump left office. We have new details next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: The breaking news now, the U.S. Justice Department is launching an investigation into how 15 boxing of White House records, including classified information, ended up at Mar-a-Lago after former President Donald Trump left office.

CAMEROTA: The National Archives recovered the documents from Trump's Florida resort in January, raising concerns that the former president may have violated the Presidential Records Act.

CNN's Ryan Nobles is following this.

So tell us about the investigation.

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this answer as question for us, Victor and Alisyn, because the House Oversight Committee had for some time asking for this material for an investigation of their own from the National Archives.

And the archives had missed several deadlines to hand that information over. We now know why. It's because the Department of Justice is looking into exactly what happened with these records, and if the former president or one of his aides mishandled classified information as he was leaving the White House. Now we don't know exactly how far this investigation will lead. But

the fact the Department of Justice is interested in enough to prevent it from going to a congressional committee is significant.

And, of course, there's a lot of interest as it relates to these documents that were in the Trump White House, not just from the Oversight Committee, not just from the Department of Justice, but from the January 6th Select Committee as well.

[14:59:57]

They've been handed over thousands of documents from the Trump White House, including those call records, which we broke the story about there being huge call log gaps during that period of time.