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Ex-Trump Attorney Blocks 36K Pages Of Emails From 1/6 Committee; New Texts Show Oath Keepers Discussed Protecting GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson On 1/6; Biden Administration Bans Anti-Satellite Weapons Tests; Putin Honors Russian Brigade Accused Of War Crimes In Bucha; Biden Admin Considers Zelenskyy Request To Classify Russia As State Sponsor Of Terrorism; IMF: Russia's War On Ukraine Will "Severely Set Back" Global Economy; Gas Prices Are Creeping Higher Again. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired April 19, 2022 - 14:30   ET

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

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[14:31:58]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: A former attorney for Donald Trump is trying to keep thousands of pages of emails from the January 6th committee. John Eastman insists the documents should remain confidential.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Now, a federal judge, who previously ordered him to turn over more than 100 emails, may rule on whether these documents can remain secret.

CNN's Ryan Nobles joins us now.

Ryan, what exactly are these documents that Eastman is trying to block?

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, these are communications that he had with members of the Trump campaign team through his email address that he used at the university he worked at, at the time, Chapman University.

And there's a lot in here, 32,000 -- I'm sorry, 36,000 pages of documents, 32,000 documents in all.

And Eastman believes they should be kept protected because of attorney-client privilege.

This has been a complicated process because essentially the judge has to review each one of these documents on a case-by-case basis to determine whether or not the committee should have access to them.

And up until this point, the judge has really leaned in favor of the committee's being able to access this information.

And they've already allowed the release of more than 100 pages of documents, including an email that included a draft memo that Eastman helped to craft, in association with Rudy Giuliani, that was related to Vice President Mike Pence standing in the way of the certification of the election results.

The problem here for the committee, though, of course, Alisyn and Victor -- we have talked about this a lot -- is just timing. It's going to take a long time to get through all this.

And we know the committee, working on a shot clock, they need to have this done by the midterm elections.

CAMEROTA: Yes, those are a lot of emails.

You have new information about the Oath Keepers and some of the role they played during January 6th. So what did you find out?

NOBLES: Yes, this is interesting information that came out in a batch of court documents related to the Oath Keepers and the DOJ prosecution of them for their role in what happened on January 6th.

And an interesting name popped up and that is Congressman Ronny Jackson, of Texas, who the Oath Keepers are talking about in text messages that the Department of Justice has obtained.

They say, at one point, "Dr. Ronny Jackson is on the move. He needs protection. If anyone inside can cover him, he has critical data to protect."

And the Oath Keepers' leader, Stewart Rhodes, who is under indictment right now, responds, "Give him my cell."

Now, up until this point, you know, Jackson, a long-time supporter of President Trump, served as the personal physician in the White House. But he's not a name that's popped up as being part of these efforts to undermine the election results or anything related to January 6th.

Now, Jackson's office responded to this, saying that he knows nothing about these communications, he doesn't know what they're talking about.

But you have to imagine this is going to raise some eyebrows within the January 6th Select Committee and they're going to want to ask questions about what Jackson does and does not know about the activities of the Oath Keepers on that day.

CAMEROTA: OK, Ryan Nobles, thank you.

BLACKWELL: The Biden administration says the destruction of satellites in orbit by missile systems is reckless, dangerous, and irresponsible.

This is called an anti-satellite weapons test.

[14:35:01]

CAMEROTA: Vice President Kamala Harris announced the U.S. will no longer carry out these kinds of tests. And she's urging other nations to follow suit.

CNN innovation and space correspondent, Rachel Crane, joins us now. Rachel, what does all of this mean?

RACHEL CRANE, CNN INNOVATION & SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Well, let me break it down for you because this ban is the first of its kind. But the U.S. has already demonstrated that we have this capability. We haven't done one of these tests for over a decade now.

India, China, and Russia have also demonstrated that they have ASAT technology.

But it's the other space-faring nations that really, if they follow suit, that's what makes this significant.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson appealing to the rest of the space- faring nations, putting out a statement saying:

"There's no doubt that human space flight and the future of the space environment are incompatible with destructive, direct ascent ASAT missile tests. I encourage the world to join us in making this important commitment."

Now, the reason that this all happened, that this ban took place, was because, five months ago, Russia demonstrated one of these tests.

And the debris cloud that it created was actually potentially risked the lives of the astronauts and the cosmonauts on board the International Space Station. They had to huddle in place in the spacecraft attached to the station.

So it created over 1,500 pieces of debris. And when those pieces of debris are traveling at thousands of miles an hour, they become missiles in themselves. They can take out satellites, take out the station.

So it's been the Wild West up there in space. Everybody really being able to do whatever they want. So the U.S. taking steps to say, you know, we are going to ban these tests.

Vice President Harris spoke at Vandenburg Space Force Base yesterday. Take a listen to what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These tests are part of their efforts to develop anti-satellite weapons systems.

These weapons are intended to deny the United States our ability to use our space capabilities by disrupting, destroying our satellites, satellites which are critical to our national security.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CRANE: So, really trying to establish new norms and responsible practices in space.

This comes at a time when space has never been more important, when we're more reliant on space than ever before.

SpaceX, One Web, and Amazon soon to create these mega constellations. So it's getting very, very crowded up there. So responsible practice is very important.

BLACKWELL: Yes, national security issue, the vice president said there, that most people have never heard of.

CRANE: Exactly.

BLACKWELL: Rachel Crane, thank you.

CAMEROTA: It's one of the most hideous images of the war in Ukraine. Hundreds of murdered civilians in mass graves in the town of Bucha. Now, the brigade accused of committing this atrocity is being rewarded by Putin.

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[14:42:44]

Vladimir Putin is now honoring the military unit accused of war crimes in Ukraine. Specifically, the soldiers behind the atrocities in the town of Bucha.

You'll remember bodies were seen lining the streets there of a small village. Many of the victims found with their hands tied behind their backs. CNN cameras documented a sickening scene of mass graves in the village that's located on the outskirts of Kyiv.

Putin congratulated the brigade in a letter. He awarded the soldiers with an honorary title and thanked them for great heroism and courage.

CAMEROTA: Let's bring in retired Army Brigade General Peter Zwack. He's a former attache to the Russian Federation. His new book is called "Swimming the Volga, A U.S. Army Officer's Experiences in Pre- Putin Russia."

Also with us is CNN global affairs analyst, Kim Dozier.

It seems, Kim, just -- I don't even know the adjective for it -- that he would honor these atrocities in Bucha, which, let's remember, Russia says are staged anyway, that somehow the Ukrainians are staging their own deaths and the corpses on the ground.

And so what is this message from Putin?

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: The message is to those troops about to prosecute the fight in eastern Ukraine, whatever you heard from your fellow troops and commanders about what happened in Bucha, you may do the same in eastern Ukraine and you will be rewarded. It is chilling.

We already knew that they were going to be doing some sort of what they call filtration of the men in the towns that they take over to see if any of them were fighters. But this is a green light to summary execution, torture, and indiscriminate shelling and bombing of areas with civilians living in them.

BLACKWELL: With that context, General, let me bring to you what we heard from the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, that Russia will use conventional weapons only in Ukraine.

Considering what we just heard from Kim and this honor for the brigade in Bucha, what's that promise worth? Anything?

BRIG. GEN. PETER ZWACK, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: What we're seeing is that there's a pretty broad definition of, if you will, of weapons and tactics being used in that.

[14:45:02]

Yes, what they're saying is, we're not going to go chemical. The jury's still out on that. And of course, always the specter of tactical nukes.

No. They've -- their gloves are already off.

What has happened with the honoraria of this unit, the 64th Motorized, this goes all the way back to the Second World War. They've honored that guards are calling now a guards unit.

And completely back Kim on her assessment.

There's also defiance in this. I believe a defiance right out of Putin and the Kremlin. It's intimidation. It is supporting the troops.

This is a regular infantry, motorized infantry unit. And the troubling part is if they're being honored for this type of things, I'd hate to see what's going on with the National Guard and the Wagner troops that we have also heard have been doing.

This is really malign. It's evil. And it's defiant.

CAMEROTA: General, I want to stick with you about military logistics for a second, about what's happening today on the ground.

The fighting has begun, apparently, in earnest. We hear that from the Ukrainian side and from the Russian side. This is in the eastern region, the Donbass region, Donetsk and Luhansk.

We just talked to the former prime minister, Ukrainian prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who said that, if the U.S. and the West can get the weapons into Ukraine, Ukrainians will figure out how to get them to the east.

They have the know-how, they say, the logistical wherewithal to get the heavy weapons that they need to win that over to the east.

Is that true? Is it possible to get the weapons they need there today or soon? ZWACK: It's hard. But you know, I keep thinking about, we were, and

our allies, the arsenal of democracy in the Second World War with technologies that were vastly different and lesser today and they got stuff up there, the Red Ball Express and all that.

This just has to be a priority. And it's not just the United States. It is not just NATO. It's everybody.

And surge that equipment in. Get more -- the Howitzers are great. They need a whole lot more. All that, rockets, missiles, this is the time.

And your pictures were very telling, your reporters, of Russian heavily -- they use an awful lot of rockets and shells, these multiple rocket launchers. Just today, in your media. These are threatening mass area weapons.

Logistics are a problem for the Russians. They're pushing it up. They want to immerse, inundate the Ukrainian lines with mask fires because they know have them sort of fixed.

But the Ukrainians have their own responses. But they need, as you suggested, more shells, more Stingers for low-flying aircraft, especially now. Of course, more Javelins and all that. Now's the time.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

Kim, the State Department spokesman, Ned Price, told us here on the show yesterday that the administration is considering the request from President Zelenskyy to classify Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.

If that decision is made, what does that change? Anything significantly?

DOZIER: Well, that would put Russia symbolically in a very small group of countries, including North Korea and Iran, listed as a state sponsor of terror.

And it would also likely trigger secondary sanctions in that the U.S. would not allow even some of the trade that's going on right now to Russia being conducted by China, India, et cetera. But it is something that could take several weeks.

I have to point out, it's something that Ukraine has been asking for since the invasion of Crimea. So this is a longstanding request. But only with the atrocities we've seen in this war has a U.S. administration seriously considered it.

Just to add on to what Peter was saying about rushing weapons to the battlefield, we, in the Pentagon Press Corps, did get a briefing by two senior defense officials today who said, within hours of a presidential order being passed, they are going through the weapons and stacking them on planes.

And that they expect to have something like seven plane loads a day going in shortly. They can get it to Kyiv -- sorry, to Lviv. The hard part is getting it

across the country by railroad without it getting hit or by truck to those 40,000 Ukrainian troops stationed, garrisoned and dug into trenches in eastern Ukraine.

CAMEROTA: Understood.

[14:49:59]

General Zwack, Kim Dozier, thank you very much for your expertise.

BLACKWELL: Well, just in time for summer road trips, prices at the pump are creeping higher. What forecasters are warning. That's coming up next.

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CAMEROTA: Russia's war on Ukraine has prompted the International Monetary Fund to downgrade its global growth forecast for the next two years.

[14:55:02]

BLACKWELL: The IMF now expects the world economy to expand by 3.6 percent in both 2022 and 2023. That is a sharp slowdown of growth of 6.1 percent in 2021.

CNN reporter, Matt Egan, is here to explain.

Matt, what's causing this? What's going on?

MATT EGAN, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: This war has delivered the financial equivalent of an earthquake to the world economy. So much has changed in such a short amount of time.

The economy, growth is slowing down. Inflation is getting worse. And these inflation fears are on the rise.

So that's why the IMF has downgraded the outlook for growth, now calling for 4.4 percent growth for this year. Previously, just a few mons ago, they were calling for 3.6 percent.

That is meaningfully slower, especially compared to last year. They think prices are going to go up more than previously anticipated.

Let me read you a key line from this IMF report. If says, quote, "The war will severely set back the global recovery, slowing growth and increasing inflation even further."

But there's a lot of uncertainty here. We don't know how long the war will last. We don't know if it will spread. Is Europe going to really punish Russia in terms of energy sanctions? We just don't know.

But the answers to those questions will say a lot in terms of the actual economic impact here in the longer run.

CAMEROTA: In terms of inflation, are there new signs of it today?

EGAN: There are. There's all these wild swings we've seen in financial markets and commodity markets.

Let me show you a couple. Corn prices going up to the highest level since 2012. As you can see on that chart. Trading at $8 a bushel.

A few factors there. One of them is Ukraine is one of the biggest corn exporters in the world. That supply is now in doubt.

U.S. farmers, they're not planning to produce as much corn, in part, because of high fertilizer costs. They are switching to soybeans instead.

On the energy front, we've also seen natural gas futures hit the highest level since 2008, ahead of this rare April nor'easter. Prices have come back down today. But they are still up a lot.

And then, gas prices, that's slow-but-steady decline at the pump has stopped the national average at $4.10 a gallon, up three cents over the last few days.

Some forecasters I've talked to are concerned that gas prices will go higher as war continues and demand picks up. But there's a lot of uncertainty there because oil prices are down today.

So this stuff can change minute by minute.

BLACKWELL: As we have seen.

Matt Egan, thank you.

EGAN: Thank you, guys.

CAMEROTA: Sailors are still missing after that sinking of the Russian warship. And there's very limited information being released by the Kremlin. So one father is now turning to social media for help finding his son.

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