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Biden's Trip to Asia; Possible North Korean Missile Test; John Park is Interviewed about Biden in Asia; Eastman Fights Turning over Notes; Concern over Formula Shortage. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired May 20, 2022 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:26]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A good Friday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

Right now, President Biden is beginning his first trip to Asia since taking office. Biden there arriving in Seoul early this morning. The mission, to reaffirm a key alliance at an uncertain moment, to say the least, in each Asia, reassuring America's Asian allies of its commitment to counter and contain China, as well as North Korea.

The president began his trip by joining the South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeul, at a Samsung semiconductor plant. Semiconductor planning so central to this.

The other major stop for the president on this trip is Japan. But as Biden makes the rounds, there is also growing concern over what North Korea might do next to rattle the saber. The United States preparing for the distinct possibility that Kim Jong-un would conduct a missile test, an ICBM, in coordination with Biden's trip. Wouldn't be the first time he did it. We're going to have more on that possibility in a moment.

Let's begin, though, in Seoul, South Korea.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond is there.

Jeremy, tell us what the Biden administration hopes to accomplish on this trip, both in South Korea and Japan.

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, President Biden has arrived here in South Korea at a moment of extraordinary tension as the potential for North Korean ballistic missile tests looms large over the president's trip. We have learned, according to an official familiar with the intelligence, that south -- that North Korea appears to be taking steps to fuel an ICBM, which would be one of the final stages before a launch. Really raising the stakes and the possibility that North Korea could launch such a test while President Biden is in South Korea, or at least in the region, as he heads to Japan next.

But President Biden beginning his trip at this chip factory, a Samsung factory, here in Seoul. And we know that President Biden, obviously this is a domestic issue, this chip shortage in the United States, but he also sought to tie it into a broader global context. Even bringing it back to the war in Ukraine.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Putin's brutal and unprovoked war in Ukraine has further spotlighted the need to secure our critical supply chains so that our economy, our economic and our national security are not dependent on countries that don't share our values.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DIAMOND: And, obviously, Russia has not impacted the semiconductor chip shortage in the United States. But Biden's broader point here is one that I think we'll expect to hear more and more, which is this idea of democracy versus autocracy. And the president also tying this issue to China, which -- where the U.S. is reliant on for certain technologies. And President Biden has been trying to wean the U.S. off of that. I think it's a point that he'll emphasize as he meets with allies here in Korea, as well as in Japan.

Now, meanwhile, another incident happening while President Biden -- as President Biden arrived here in Korea. Two U.S. Secret Service agents apparently have been sent back to the United States, placed on administrative leave, after they got into an altercation with a cab driver and two other Korean nationals, according to a source familiar with the matter. The Secret Service spokesman saying that they've been placed on administrative leave, but that they were not -- that this will not impact President Biden's security while he is here.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Jeremy Diamond, in Seoul, thanks so much.

More now on the concerns over what North Korea could be planning while President Biden is in Asia.

CNN Pentagon correspondent Oren Liebermann standing by.

Oren, has the administration determined the likelihood of a missile test while Biden is in Asia?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: The administration has said -- or U.S. officials, rather, have said that it looks very possible that this will happen imminently. A couple of days ago it was in the next 48 to 96 hours and now it looks like that window is very much open here. The U.S. has watched this test site near Pyongyang, near the capital of North Korea, to watch North Korean activity as they prepare for what appears to be an upcoming intercontinental ballistic missile test.

They have watched over the course of the past few months as a new ICBM system was tested, first in late February, then again in March, and again in May, what may have been an explosion on the launchpad, and now they are preparing for another test, sort of a launch of this ICBM system. A U.S. official familiar with the latest intelligence says they're looking to see if there is the fueling of a missile, essentially one of the last stages before you carry out an ICBM test. And that's because, frankly, you don't want the missiles sitting on the launch platform all that long with fuel in it. So, fueling the missile is one of those last steps before you carry out a test.

We've seen almost the frenetic pace earlier this year of North Korean missile testing. That has slowed down a bit, but has certainly continued throughout the course of this year. Where now we're at well more than a dozen tests of not only ballistic missiles, but also claimed hypersonic missiles and cruise missiles.

[09:05:07]

The U.S. has been watching this very closely.

In March, after they saw the first of these ICBM system trials, the U.S. said it would increase surveillance at the Yellow Sea near North Korea. Earlier this week, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan suggested the U.S. may take more steps if there is an ICBM test, especially while President Joe Biden is in the region.

And, Jim, let's not forget, this isn't the only thing the Americans are watching for. Another underground nuclear test, the first in quite a number of years, is also possible, even though that doesn't appear to be as imminent, according to officials we've spoken with. That would still be an incredibly urgent step and something also the U.S. is watching very closely.

SCIUTTO: Yes, even more significant, potentially.

Oren Liebermann, at the Pentagon, thanks so much.

Joining me now, John Park, he's the director of the Korea Project at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Good to have you. Lots to discuss here.

So, President Biden's first trip to Asia. Asia was supposed to be the focus of his administration's policy. Sort of the umpteenth time we've tried this pivot to Asia. Of course, Ukraine brought attention back to Europe.

But what a success for Biden on this trip?

JOHN PARK, DIRECTOR, KOREA PROJECT AT HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL: That's a great question. I think right now, if you put it in that frame of the pivot and the effort to pivot to Asia, that's in the rear-view mirror. This is about institution building in the region. That's going to be done on a multilateral basis and the alliances are going to be pillars in that multilateral approach.

So, if you look at it from that perspective, this is framed with respect to the Indo-Pacific strategy. And in this the South Koreans have a critical part to play, and it is about semiconductors. SCIUTTO: Before we get to semiconductor, there was a real chance that

had Trump been re-elected he would have taken U.S. troops off the Korean peninsula. So, under a different administration, that decades old alliance might not have survived. Might have been another president in a few years' time. What is the level of confidence, the actual confidence that South Koreans, and the Japanese for their part, have in the U.S. commitment to them?

PARK: So, with this, the bilateral relationship, the military security bilateral relationship between the United States and South Korea is a unique one. South Korea is one of five treaty alliances that the United States has. And with that, South Korea stands out because there's something called a combined forces command. This is where the U.S. and South Korean militaries are intertwined. So a decisions to withdraw troops, if that were to come about, it would take time to unwind the many, many layers of these institutions. But I think with this Indo-Pacific framing it's a different type of perspective even from a few years ago now.

SCIUTTO: OK, let's talk about semiconductors because central to these concerns here, it's not just short-term, it's long-term stuff, right? I mean still Taiwan makes the lion's share of the world's semiconductors. There's concerns about what happens if China were to invade. Plus you have the pandemic issues in terms of production in China today.

Do the U.S. and its allies have a real plan to diversify, not just the U.S., but the world's reliance on really just a handful of semiconductor makers?

PARK: Absolutely. And, Jim, this has been in the works for a while. And we're seeing acceleration of that plan right now.

So, if you look at it, Samsung is the one that was highlighted today. Almost as soon as President Biden landed in South Korea at Pyongtech (ph), he went to the Samsung semiconductor plant. This is a model of what the South Koreans are building in Tyler, Texas. It's estimated to be -- you know, to come on line basically in early 2024, which by these construction timetables is really accelerated.

But the other thing to highlight is that Samsung's not the only one. The other major South Korean conglomerates (INAUDIBLE) are all basically investing and continue with their plans to invest and grow in the United States. And this is predominately in the high tech, as well as in the environmental development areas.

SCIUTTO: So many things -- there's so many chips in each car, so many chips in each of those javelin missile, right, going -- you know, 100s in each javelin missile going to Ukraine.

PARK: That's right.

SCIUTTO: Let's talk about North Korea because this is, you know, multiple administrations, Democrat and Republican.

PARK: Right. SCIUTTO: Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden. North -- all of them failed to hem in North Korea's nuclear and missile program.

What is the Biden administration doing differently, if anything? Where does the relationship stand?

PARK: Sure. First off, I think the failure has been on both sides. The South Koreans have also been trying to move forward on this, but the North Koreans have missed opportunities in a number of areas. So, really it is something that we view from the lens of U.S./North Korea, but the countries in the region, those efforts have not come to fruition as well.

The main thing right now is that North Korea is on a development path that it has clearly laid out for itself. So it's not interested in negotiations right now. It's, at what point do they feel we've accomplished what we want with our nuclear weapons program, and we're now open to negotiations with the United States. There's no indications right now. And it's unlikely that kind of indication will even come, if there is an ICBM test, on this particular visit.

SCIUTTO: It's amazing. And all those steps. All those attempts have failed.

John Park, good to have you on. Thanks so much.

PARK: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: New this morning, the lawyer who was central to former President Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election says he has handwritten notes from Trump and he's trying to keep them out of the hands of the January 6th committee. Can he?

Plus, one of the last Ukrainian commanders inside that steel plant in Mariupol posts some haunting photos of himself, saying he is prepared to die there.

[09:10:05]

But there are new reports that Ukrainian military leaders have given the order to stop defending Mariupol. In effect to surrender.

And later, a police chase ends with a fiery explosion at a gas station, and the suspect severely burned. Now the deputy who discharged his Taser is facing charges.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: New this morning, a late-night court filing could show that former President Trump's direct role in planning the strategy for overturning the election, even detailing handwritten notes from the former president. The filing is coming from John Eastman, the right- wing attorney who worked closely with Trump to undermine vote counts in the weeks after the election, overturn the election, and leading up to the January 6th attack on the Capitol.

[09:15:08]

CNN's senior crime and justice reporter Katelyn Polantz joins me now.

So, Katelyn, handwritten notes from the president to Eastman. We know he didn't like email, right? Didn't like electronic records. But Eastman trying to shield it

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: That's right. John Eastman has been fighting over this for a long time in court. He had lots of emails. And this now is a revelation that we're getting.

Eastman, in this court filing last night, as he's looking at individual emails and arguing to keep them private, is saying that there are two that the House Select Committee wants, and still has not seen, two documents that include handwritten notes from former President Trump about information that he thought might be useful for the anticipated litigation. And so we have never before known whether or not there was actual documentation of Trump saying with his own hand this is what I want to do. Here, the House is learning, the public is learning that that sort of documentation exists.

Now, this is something that is in court at this time. And so Eastman is arguing, you know, this is part of the attorney/client privilege. It should be confidential. There's also communications he has with six conduits to President Trump who also knew what Trump's thinking was at that time. There's documents of those. He wants to keep those private as well.

And so now a judge is going to look at this. And, as we learned before in this case, that the House Select Committee has the upper hand here. They have won access to Eastman emails. They know it exists now. They're going to come in and argue that they should be able to see these as part of the January 6th investigation.

SCIUTTO: Just quickly, when are we going to see a report from the January 6th committee?

POLANTZ: That's a great question. We know there's public hearings coming in next couple weeks.

SCIUTTO: All right. Katelyn Polantz, thanks very much.

All right, joining me now to discuss the law of all this, CNN's senior legal analyst, Elie Honig, for assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Elie, OK, so, let's talk about attorney/client privilege. Does that apply to a sitting U.S. president when the question at hand is whether he attempted to help overturn an election?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Jim, a sitting U.S. president can have attorney/client privilege. He is entitled to that. But it's very unlikely Donald Trump is going to win and John Eastman is going to win in this case because John Eastman already has lost earlier in this case in front of this same judge. You'll probably remember a couple of months ago John Eastman argued

some documents don't go over to the committee because their communications between me as an attorney and my client Donald Trump. The court rejected that. And as to some of those documents, some of them, the court found they're not privileged because it's more likely than not that they go to a criminal communication between John Eastman and Donald Trump. That's an enormously significant finding. John Eastman lost before. I think he's very likely to lose again. I think the committee's very likely to get these documents.

SCIUTTO: Elie, big question here is the president's intent. And central to that question is whether he knew his claims of a stolen election were false at the time he was trying to overturn the election. What's the standard here to prove that, to prove intent, in effect?

HONIG: Yes, so what's significant about these new revelations, Jim, is that they directly tie Donald Trump to an arguable fraud. I think maybe more than an arguable fraud, right? And now let's keep this in mind, this puts Donald Trump right in line with John Eastman on this strategy to try to steal the election by pressuring state legislatures, by pressuring the vice president.

Now that legal argument is dubious at best, but the defense is going to be, well, lawyers are allowed to make aggressive, novel, even sometimes just bad legal arguments. That's not necessarily a fraud. But the fraud is a layer below, because those arguments were built on a foundation of lies that Donald Trump had won the election, that there was massive election fraud. There's simply no evidence of that. There never was. And so that's where I think the actual fraud could come in here.

SCIUTTO: Listen, by the way, the president made so many public statements about it too. It's not like it was happening behind closed doors.

All right, so, other revelations from the committee. It appears they have video evidence of tours given to rioters by sitting members of Congress here. You say the crucial piece of evidence here is why were those tours given. I mean what would the committee have to show to show that this was in effect aiding and abetting, right, the rioters, rather than an uncomfortable coincidence?

HONIG: Yes, the committee and House Democrats had better back up what they're saying here because this is a mighty dramatic and drastic accusation to make that a sitting member of Congress knowingly gave tours in order to aid people the next day, January 6th, in storming the Capitol. So, I think what we need to look at, what the committee needs to look at is, a, were there tours given, b, were those tours given by the congressman himself, c, was there something out of the ordinary, did the congressman show these people who were taking the tour secret or unknown entrances or exits, did they talk about security, things you would never talk about on a normal tour.

[09:20:07] And then, finally, did these people participate in the storming of the Capitol the next day? Look, the committee seems to be confident that they have evidence. They say our evidence directly contradicts the denials by Representative Loudermilk. But, again, if this is true, this is a traitorous act by the member of Congress. And so the committee had better have its evidence and it better show what they say it shows.

SCIUTTO: Yes, perhaps at minimum that he lied about whether he did tours or not. The congressman involved in this, Barry Loudermilk.

OK, Bill Barr. So, Bill Barr is going to testify to the committee under oath.

HONIG: Yes.

SCIUTTO: What's the significance?

HONIG: IT's a tale of two Bill Barrs, as always. Leading up to the election he was very much a fan and a proponent of the big lie. But after the election, of course, he turned on Donald Trump and he said publicly there's no evidence of widespread election fraud. We at DOJ investigated. We didn't find any.

So, if Bill Barr testifies to that, that's going to go directly to Donald Trump's state of mind. Bill Barr has written and said publicly that he told Donald Trump to his face there's no evidence of this. Bill Barr said he told Donald Trump his theories were BS, he used the full word. So, that goes to Donald Trump's state of mind. If Donald Trump was told by his attorney general and others in position of power, there's no evidence of this, then again, Jim, it all goes to the fraud that Donald Trump and others around him were pushing.

SCIUTTO: Yes, that gets right backs to my earlier question, right, knowledge.

HONIG: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Did he know it was false at the time or have reasonable ability to know it was false even while he was making those claims and attempts?

Elie Honig, thanks for coming, as always.

HONIG: Thanks, Jim. All right.

SCIUTTO: Still ahead, families now rationing baby formula to keep their infants fed. The latest attempts to end the critical shortage, where they stand, that's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:26:28]

SCIUTTO: On the baby formula shortage, some good news this morning, the Biden administration has secured its first batch of baby formula from overseas, and is now preparing to fly it to the U.S. It is the latest move to help ease the ongoing nationwide shortage, and part of the newly launched Operation Fly Formula program. It's even got a brand. Nestle has agreed to transfer up to 1.5 million bottles of formula from abroad. The first plane is expected to leave Switzerland in the coming days. Upon arrival, that formula will go to parts of the country that need it most.

But, as we wait for those supplies to arrive, new numbers show the shortage actually got worse in the last week. An agency that tracks store inventory tells CNN that 45 percent of baby formula products were out of stock at some point last week. And pediatricians are worried that many families may start rationing formula for their children.

CNN's senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has more on this.

Elizabeth, rationing, I mean it's a remarkable place to be in the year 2022, in one of the richest countries in the world. How long do we expect that to persist?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: So, Jim, that's exactly how these parents feel and they're feeling it amidst no update yet from Abbott or from the FDA on when exactly they're going to get that shuttered Michigan plant up and running.

So, I want to introduce you Claire Holland (ph). She lives in Mandeville, Louisiana. She's 12 years old. She graduated from sixth grade yesterday, got the science award. She's on the honor roll. But she was born with a genetic condition where she can't metabolize protein. Her diet is extremely limited. So she's on a special formula that Abbott makes just for people with her specific genetic condition. And her parents are giving her half of what they usually give her because while Abbott did send them a shipment recently, they don't know when their next shipment is coming in. And her mother, Shannon, is very worried about what it could mean for her health long-term to be getting only half of the formula she usually takes.

Let's take a listen to Shannon Holland.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHANNON HOLLAND, RATIONING FORMULA FOR DAUGHTER: It's scary because she's taken his for so long. And, as a parent, I feel bad that we didn't have a backup. That we didn't have something else she could take. It never would have occurred to me that suddenly we wouldn't be able to get her formula. I usually try to be on top of things, and then when this happened and we had no backup that she could take that we knew that she would like, as a mom, I felt very terrible and I felt worried for her. I never expected not to have access to her formula. I -- it just never really occurred to me that would happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: Unfortunately, Claire Holland is not the only child who is having her formula rationed. I want to introduce you also to Owen Steber (ph). He lives outside of Chicago. And the Steber family, they have had to ration his formula. He has a rare condition where he's allergic to many, many foods, and so he needs to be fed formula through a feeding tube. And his parents also having it ration his formula. They have even less of their formula left than Claire's family. They've also expressed the frustration and the fear they feel for their child.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Understandable for sure.

Elizabeth Cohen, thanks so much.

Another story we're following today, Oklahoma's Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, plans to sign into law the nation's most restrictive abortion bill, even more than others you've heard.

[09:30:03]

The bill would ban abortions, not at six weeks or 15 weeks, but from the moment of fertilization.