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Officer Inside Mariupol Plant: Evacuations Did Not Happen; U.S. Official: Intel Reports That Russia Will Try To Annex Donetsk And Luhansk By "Mid-May"; Grand Jury Selected In Georgia Probe Of Trump Election Interference. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 02, 2022 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:00:44]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: It's the top of the hour on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Alisyn Camerota.

We begin with developments, breaking developments in the desperate attempt to save Ukrainians in the city of Mariupol.

A commander inside the Azovstal steel factory where hundreds of civilians are still sheltering says the constant relentless shelling has prevented evacuations today. He said, quote: When I see five or six people die every day under bombs and the wounded die because they cannot get necessary medical care, and when I see what the soldiers eat, they're already starting to faint because of hunger. I think it is necessary to address the world community, end quote.

And this just in, Ukrainian soldiers are reporting that they killed five Russians in an attempted assault on that plant. Now, over the weekend, about 100 people made it out. One of them described living in two months of darkness. These images exclusive to CNN show how Russian strikes pulverized the compound. Russian state TV broadcasted that troops on the outskirts are engaged in what they call a step by step clearing operation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEXANDER SLADKOV, RUSSIAN STATE MEDIA REPORTER (through translator): We are finally here, establishing ourselves, not officially canteen 5, Azovstal, this is where the story has to end, as there will be no more resistance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Today, there are also new details of Ukraine making progress in the fight against Vladimir Putin. Ukraine reported that a drone took out two Russian ships, and the Ukrainian defense confirmed its forces have won back control of several settlements to the north and east of Kharkiv. That's the biggest city in Ukraine's east.

Now, according to a senior U.S. defense official, 70 howitzers from the U.S. have reached Ukraine, and 200 Ukrainian fighters have been trained to use them.

Let's bring in CNN's Anderson Cooper, he joins us from Kyiv, Ukraine.

So, Anderson, as you have been describing about those people trapped in the factory, we don't know how many are still trapped in that steel factory. But there are also civilians, women, children, elderly trapped elsewhere in Mariupol.

So, do we know what their status is?

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Yeah, it's still not clear exactly how many people were able to evacuate and exactly where they are right now. The United Nations negotiated a deal with the Russians to let the U.N. and Red Cross help with the evacuations so there's the evacuation that you've described for those inside the steel plant. There's the separate effort to get some civilians out of the city of Mariupol itself, which has been, as you know, decimated by Russian strikes.

I want to get the latest on those efforts right now. CNN's Scott McLean joins us now from Lviv.

So, Scott, we just learned about the evacuations from the steel plant could not happen today, what more do you know?

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's pretty difficult to evacuate anyone from the steel plant when you have constant bombing, constant shelling, constant fire from the ground level as well. That's what's being described by troops on the ground, from inside that steel plant, Anderson, that the assault on it is absolutely constant. It's not ending.

And so, it's not looking good for today. We know that 100 people were able to get out toward Ukrainian territory. Yesterday, the Russians say that 21 people from the plant itself actually chose to go in the opposite direction, and go toward Russian-held territory. It is not clear at this stage what has been agreed to, what the Russians and the Ukrainians have hammered out in terms of the detail, but Ukrainian officials at least have said precious little, sort of going into this radio silence mode as they call it, because they don't want to do anything to jeopardize the success of this operation.

You mentioned there are some 200 civilians, according to the troops there who are still there, who are still sheltering in place, hoping to get out. There are also wounded soldiers as well, but they would very much like to make some kind of an agreement to get them out. Those negotiations we're told by the mayor's office are happening separately, and they're happening at a very high level, Anderson.

But that seems pretty hard to believe that any kind of an arrangement could be made to get soldiers out because even Sergey Lavrov said yesterday in an interview with an Italian television station said he thinks Kyiv and president search are pushing the idea to get soldiers out because there are foreign mercenaries among their ranks.

[15:05:03]

Now, there's no evidence that we have seen that that's true, but obviously it's impossible to know without being there.

COOPER: Yeah. Scott McLean, I appreciate it. Thanks so much.

Russian forces are continuously shelling the town of Rubizhne in the Luhansk region, and the military administration says that residents there are on the verge of what they say is a humanitarian catastrophe.

Matt Rivers is live with me here in Kyiv.

So, is anyone planning evacuations for there?

MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that has been the plans for a while now. Rubizhne is a town right on the front lines. It's in the east. It's in the Luhansk region. It's one of several towns that we've heard from officials there for a long time, trying to get people out for weeks. We have heard from officials urging people to leave, because we knew in a lot of ways this was going to happen at some point.

The last time evacuation buses were able to get into Rubizhne was about a week ago at this point and we're told that officials were able to drop off substantial amount of food and water for the people that are there. But they haven't been able to get in since then because it's so dangerous. And so, as a result of that, you know, you're hearing officials basically giving up for now on getting people out of Rubizhne and what they're hoping is that doesn't play out in other towns across the front.

COOPER: The Ukrainian military saying they hit two smaller Russian boats.

RIVERS: Yeah. I think this goes to show or at least this is the message Ukraine wants to show it has capability to strike Russian naval assets in the Black Sea. This is drone video that they put out. They show two Russian patrol boats, raptor class patrol boats being taken out by Ukrainian drones, according to the Ukrainian military, in the Black Sea, and this is clearly the Ukrainians trying to get the Russian naval fleet to think twice about this, much like they did a couple of weeks ago when they managed to sink the Moskva, which was the Russian flagship vessel of its Black Sea fleet.

COOPER: Right. Also, the top Russian general was visiting near the front lines, visiting the combat zone.

RIVERS: Yeah, and this isn't fascinating because this isn't just any Russian general. We know that other Russian generals have been near the front. But this is the chief of staff of Russia's military. It's a very high up official.

And according to the U.S. defense official, he in the beginning part of last week, he was toward the front lines. There were some reports that he was injured, a U.S. official telling CNN they can't confirm that. They also can't confirm exactly why he made that visit. Does it signal for example that he has not a lot of confidence in the Russian general running this war? But what we do know is this isn't happening in a vacuum, and Russia has had lots of command and control issues throughout this war. So, does a top Russian general coming to the front line, putting himself at risk signal that he does not have faith of the generals on the ground. It's certainly a hypothesis, and one the U.S. is looking into.

COOPER: Yeah. Matt Rivers, appreciate it.

Alisyn, one of the many problems with the Russian forces, as Matt was saying, a number of Russian generals, high ranking Russian generals have been killed in this conflict as they move toward the front to try and get a sense and get a handle on the logistical problems that the Russian forces have been facing.

CAMEROTA: Yeah, absolutely. Though, of course, it is hard to get information about exactly how many.

Anderson, thank you very much. We'll check back with you.

Meanwhile, let's bring in, former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. He's now partner at the Paul Weiss law firm.

Also with us is John Sipher. He worked for the CIA's clandestine service for 28 years, is now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Gentlemen, it's great to have you here today.

Secretary Johnson, Russia has warned the West and the U.S. specifically not to help Ukraine or they would face severe retaliation. Of course, the U.S. has ignored that, and continued to help Ukraine. How likely do you think it is that the retaliation, if it were to come, would come in the form of a cyber attack, and in particular, connected to the election systems say around the midterms?

JEH JOHNSON, FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: Alisyn, we certainly have to be prepared for that. As time passes, as we do more and more in the western world, particularly the United States to aid Ukraine, to defend freedom, we have to anticipate that the Russians in some form may plan some form of counterattack, most notably, a cyber attack, possibly on the U.S. government, possibly on critical infrastructure.

I have been advising those in critical infrastructure, the defense industry, now even possibly financial services to be on high alert for a possible cyber attack. In many respects, Alisyn, cyber space is a new battle space, and we simply have to be prepared.

We know the Russians have this capability. We know what they did in the 2016 election, and so we should be on high alert in cyber space.

CAMEROTA: You know, I want to follow up on that, Secretary Johnson, because we're just getting new reporting in about exactly what you're talking about. A year-long Pentagon pilot program found an array of software vulnerabilities at dozens of defense contractors as Russian and Chinese hackers continue to try to steal sensitive data from the U.S. defense industrial base.

[15:10:04]

That sounds very worrisome. I mean, you say you have been looking into that and warning about it, are we prepared for such a thing?

JOHNSON: The defense industrial base -- and I'm a director of a defense contractor -- the defense industrial base, financial services are very, very sophisticated when it comes to their own cyber defenses. Attempts at theft of intellectual property in the defense industry, elsewhere is not new.

What we should be looking out for in particular is some form of counteroffensive, some sort of attack, some sort of destructive malware attack here in the United States. Not just theft, not just ransomware, but some form of malware that has the effect of degrading one or more systems.

CAMEROTA: Deputy Sipher, what do you think about whether or not we're prepared for what's come something.

JOHN SIPHER, FORMER CIA DEPUTY CHIEF OF RUSSIA OPERATIONS: Well, I think part of the problem for Vladimir Putin is he has been doing these things to us and the Ukrainians sort of nonstop for a long time, involved in the political warfare or cyber warfare, espionage, even assassinations around Europe. And part of the weakness that he's showing in Ukraine is because he was pulling out all of these stops against Ukraine since 2014. They have been fighting Ukrainians, hit with cyber attacks, they have been doing all of these kinds of things, when they were invaded, Ukrainians knew the game plan. They were prepared. They knew how to defend against it.

Vladimir Putin doesn't have many more bullets in his gun. He can threaten, he can intimidate, but there isn't much more he can do. You know, he was likely to go after elections in any case. He was likely to get involved in espionage and theft. That's something they have been doing forever.

So I think he'll try these things, but frankly he's been playing this game for a long time, and the longer he plays it, the less effective he's going to be.

CAMEROTA: I have another follow up for you Deputy Sipher because we're also just getting this new reporting in.

According to the U.S. ambassador for the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, they say that the U.S. has highly credible intelligence reports that Russia will try to annex the separatist occupied regions of Donetsk and Luhansk sometime in mid-May and that there are plans to create a similarly so called people's republic in Kherson to be annexed as well.

So, that's -- I mean -- well, I want to know what you think about the credibility of that report and if that is the new goal from Russia?

SIPHER: Yeah, in fact, you know, prior to the invasion, they had talked about, you know, annexing those groups in Donbas, those places in Donbas, too. But, you know, frankly, their goal was also to take Kyiv, and you know, some of it has to do with what the defense does and the Ukrainians do.

So, that may very well be their goal. Do they have the capability to do that? I think they, you know, shot a loft lot of what they're open to going into Kyiv, and now they have to sort of pull back, try to use heavy artillery to take these areas. But it's not completely clear that they can take extra territory and hold it.

Yes, that may be a goal. That's not really very surprising but, you know, the Ukrainians are the ones that asked about that.

CAMEROTA: Secretary Johnson, do you think all of the sanctions that the Biden administration has put on Russia, have they enhanced our national security or made us more in jeopardy?

JOHNSON: They've certainly enhanced our national security in terms of the defense of freedom around the world. I believe that sanctions will have an impact. Sanctions tend to have a long-term impact, and it's something we just absolutely need to do.

This was an illegal, unprovoked invasion. Numerous war crimes are being committed by Vladimir Putin against a free people in Ukraine. The United States cannot afford to sit and do nothing.

And so, sanctions are appropriate, all the other measures we are taking now, I believe, are fully appropriate, though, as I said earlier, we need to be on full alert for some form of possible action by Vladimir Putin directed against the United States. And I'm sure we are.

CAMEROTA: Jeh Johnson, John Sipher, thank you both very much for your expertise.

Well, Germany aligns with the European Union, and now supports a Russian oil embargo. Ahead, how this could reshape the war in Ukraine.

And a special grand jury is selected in Georgia in the investigation into whether Donald Trump interfered with the 2020 election. That's next.

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[15:19:08]

SIPHER: A grand jury, a special grand jury is now in place in the investigation into whether former President Trump and his allies committed a crime in their efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

CNN political correspondent Sara Murray joins us now.

Sara, what happens next?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, they have chosen their grand jurors, they have 23 of them. They had three alternates. These are people who were going to be solely focused on this Trump investigation. They are going to convene and deliberate in secret. They are going to do this once a week, a couple of times a week starting in June, depending on where they are.

And they're going to have these wide investigative powers. They are going to be able to witness testimony and subpoena documents. They will be able to subpoena phone records and they'll have a year to do their work. The district attorney has told us she hopes to make a decision about whether to bring charges before the end of the year.

This will not be the grand jury that could issue an indictment, but the one doing the investigating.

[15:20:03]

What are they investigating? It all goes back to the infamous call that happened between Donald Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Here's a snippet of that call.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So, what are going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. We have that in spades already.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

MURRAY: Now, this went on for over an hour with Trump pressuring the Georgia secretary of state. Since then, the district attorney Fani Willis here has already interviewed about 50 people voluntarily.

But her investigation is not happening in a vacuum. It's happening at the same time as we've seen the House Select Committee investigating January 6th turn up a mountain of new information that could potentially be relevant to this investigation in Georgia. One of the series of text messages that Mark Meadows handed over to that committee that came out in a court filing shows a Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during this tense phone call.

In the call, Jordan Fuchs, who's then the deputy secretary of state, is telling Mark Meadows, need to end this call. I don't think this will be productive much longer.

Meadows says okay. Fuchs says, let's save the relationship. Thank you. Wow.

Stuff like this just kind of shows you how tense this was in real time. We don't know if it will be pertinent to the D.A.'s investigation here.

But we do know there's plenty of information. It's already public for her to dig through and plenty she's going to get through this grand jury, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK. Sara Murray, thank you for all of that reporting.

Let's bring in CNN senior legal analyst, Elie Honig. He's the former assistant U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York.

Elie, great to have you here.

So, what potential crimes is the district attorney looking at?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYS: Well, Alisyn, the D.A. has given us some pretty clear clues as to where she's focused. In her letter asking judges to appoint this special grand jury, Fani Willis wrote that she has a, quote, reasonable probability that the state of Georgia's administration of elections in 2020 was subject to possible criminal disruptions.

Now, under Georgia law, it is a crime to solicit, meaning just to ask somebody to commit election fraud, and that includes willfully tampering with votes or certification. The term willfully is really important. What that means legally is they knew what they were doing was wrong and against the law. And to that point, look for prosecutors to focus on, yes, the infamous call from Donald Trump to Brad Raffensperger.

So, look, all I want to do is this, I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.

Here's the keyword, "find". Prosecutors are going to say why find, if he really thought he won, and why exactly that many votes, one more than he needed. So, that's going to be a key legal question here.

CAMEROTA: Who else might they be looking at?

HONIG: We're going to see some big names in play here potentially as subjects or as witnesses. Senator Lindsey Graham reportedly called Brad Raffensperger a few weeks before this and ask if he might consider throwing out mail-in ballots from certain counties.

The governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, reportedly, was called by Donald Trump who asked him to convene a special session of the Georgia legislature. The Georgia state Attorney General Chris Carr reportedly asked him to not oppose a challenge to the Georgia election results.

And, Alisyn, what would a scandal be without Rudy Giuliani. We know that Rudy went in front of the Georgia state legislature and frankly he lied. He told them that 10,000 people in Georgia had voted who were dead. The actual number was two.

So, all of them could receive subpoenas or could even be potential subjects.

CAMEROTA: I mean, what you've just described sounds damming to, you know, my uninitiated ears, so what will a grand jury do that is different?

HONIG: Yeah. So, it's really important to understand the difference between a trial jury, we all know from watching trials, and a grand jury. The main thing a grand jury can do is issue subpoenas forcing people to testify. And this is not the congressional subpoenas we've been seeing where people sort of blow them off with no consequence. You cannot mess with a grand jury subpoena.

A trial jury, of course, has 12 members. A grand jury has 23 as Sara just reported. A trial jury must be unanimous. In a grand jury, all you need is a majority. It's much easier to get that.

The burden of proof, you have to prove of course your case beyond a reasonable doubt to a trial jury, in a grand jury it's just probable cause. Of course what a trial jury does is return a verdict, guilty or not guilty. All a grand jury can do is issue an indictment.

As Sara said, this is a special grand jury, all they can do is issue a recommendation that may go to a regular grand jury, which can indict. And, finally, trials, of course, are public. You can go watch them. We can put them on TV.

Grand jury proceedings are nonpublic so we won't know what's happening day by day, however, people who get subpoenas are allowed to tell us about it. They can walk out of the room and say, hey, here's what I asked, here's how I answered. So, we're going to have a decent sense of what's happening in that room even when we're not actually in there.

CAMEROTA: That's really helpful to have you spell it out that way.

OK. Let's talk about the January 6th committee.

HONIG: Sure.

CAMEROTA: What they're doing.

So, they have now asked for three congressmen. They need information from these guys.

HONIG: Yeah, the most interesting new revelation, by the way, is this one.

[15:25:03]

Representative Andy Biggs, that he was involved in talks about potential presidential pardons for people relating to January 6th. I mean, why might one be interested in a pardon, one must ask?

Now, the thing is the committee has already decided. It's pretty clear, they're not going to be subpoenaing their own fellow members, and that would probably include these three. So, unless and until the committee decides we're going to play hardball here, we're going to subpoena even our own fellow members of Congress, they're going to be free to just sort of shrug off these requests for information.

And the thing to remember, Alisyn, a subpoena is not an accusation. A subpoena is just a request in an order for testimony. So, if they saw things, they were just witnesses, they should have nothing to hide, but again, it's a political game. It's a legal game. CAMEROTA: Elie Honig, thank you very much. Great to get all these

information.

HONIG: Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK. Invoking Nazism as a reason to invade Ukraine. That's what Russia's foreign minister is doing, and, of course, outrage is erupting.

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