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Sri Lankan PM And President To Resign; Death Of Shinzo Abe; January 6 Hearings To Focus On Far Right Groups; Four Killed In Russian Attack On Donetsk, Missiles Hit Mykolaiv; Abortion Rights Protests In D.C.; Tapes Shed Light On Eichmann's Holocaust Role. Aired 4-5a ET

Aired July 10, 2022 - 04:00   ET

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

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KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Welcome to all of you watching us here in the United States, Canada and around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber.

Ahead on CNN NEWSROOM, democracy marred by violence in countries across the globe.

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BRUNHUBER (voice-over): In Sri Lanka, massive crowds stormed the presidential palace, forcing the top leaders to resign.

In Japan, voting is now underway following the assassination of its former prime minister, gunned down on the campaign trail.

And in the U.S., militia training, bombs and the so-called death list; what a right wing extremist group was allegedly doing right before the Capitol riot.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Live from CNN Center, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Kim Brunhuber.

BRUNHUBER: Sri Lanka's president and prime minister say they will resign after protesters stormed the residences of both leaders, as the country's seemingly endless economic crises boil over.

Saturday, demonstrators broke through to reach the presidential palace, calling for the president to leave office. And they also set fire to the prime minister's private residence. His office says that he was moved earlier to a secure location. These unprecedented protests come after months of anti-government demonstrations across the country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SISIRA KUMARA, PROTESTER (through translator): We must chase them. They must go. It is time for us to think of the country. We left everything and came for the sake of the people.

FIONA SIRIMANA, PROTESTER: We demand the president and the prime minister to have a new regime for Sri Lanka. Also, I feel very, very sad that they didn't go earlier, because, had they gone earlier, there wouldn't have been any destruction. It is time that we get all our stolen money back to this country.

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BRUNHUBER: The prime minister says he is willing to make way for an all-party government to take over. The statement came after a meeting of party leaders held by the parliament speaker. And Will Ripley is joining us live from Taipei.

Protesters got what they wanted in a sense. The top two leaders are gone.

So what now?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they will be gone in the coming days. And I think that that is what will be crucial, to watch and see that the calm that Sri Lankans are seeing today will continue until Wednesday, when the president says that he will step down.

The prime minister actually says that he will stick around until a new all-party government is formed. And the way that that works essentially is that the speaker of parliament, who is the one who actually the president informed that he would be resigning and then he gave a speech to the nation, urging calm, urging a cessation of violence, he will be the acting president for the next 30 days maximum.

That gives the parliament enough time to choose a new president.

So can this calm continue?

The speaker is asking protesters to go home. This has been building up for months. But at least for now, there is calm and that is a good headline today after what happened yesterday.

BRUNHUBER: Absolutely. But as you know, even with the country's top leaders gone, I mean, that won't be the end of the country's problems.

RIPLEY: You're absolutely right. This is the worst financial crisis that Sri Lanka has faced in more than seven decades, since the end of World War II. You have food shortages, you have power cuts that have been relentless, you have shortages of basic essentials like medicine.

You have these serpentine queues for fuel that are so long and it is basically being rationed to only essential services. This is extraordinarily difficult. And things will only get worse if they don't have international assistance. So far they haven't found a resolution. The cause, analysts say,

largely because of poor economic decisions by the president and his family, because his brother was the prime minister up until recently. This new prime minister, who saw his home set on fire yesterday, he was brought on as a replacement. But they are not happy with him, either.

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RIPLEY: They have long been calling for the president to step down and he hadn't been listening. One protester said, had the president listened to the public calls to step down sooner, a lot of the violence and damage could have been avoided.

He had 100,000 people outside the president's residence. They stormed the house, hung up banners, they swam in the pool. The president was not there, was taken to a secure location; the prime minister as well.

But just the destruction, protesters said, could have been prevented had the ruling elite listened to the public sooner, a public who is really struggling and they've struggled through COVID, through the awful cargo ship fire.

And prior to that, it was the Easter bombings that I covered, that took a huge toll on the Sri Lanka tourism industry. So as a nation, they have had a really rough go of it.

BRUNHUBER: Absolutely. Now the people there who were protesting, they aren't necessarily united in who they want to see leave the country. The opposition that is supposed to lead the country, they are not united, either, here.

What are the consequences if the new government can't steer the country out of this mess?

Are we looking at a failed state here?

RIPLEY: That certainly has been the case in other times of crisis, where there have been militant groups that have popped up. That is not what anyone wants to see happen.

Prior to the Easter bombings, Sri Lanka was starting to stabilize, the tourism industry was growing. There is great food, good beaches, the people are very warm and kind, all the ingredients for a really successful destination. So tourists from Europe, Asia, Africa, can get there easily. Visas are easy to get.

It should be a nation that should thrive and prosper. But people are truly suffering. And if they don't have a leader that can unify all the different factions, it could be extraordinarily turbulent times to come.

BRUNHUBER: Well, thanks so much for your analysis of the situation. Will Ripley in Taipei, thanks so much.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ANTHONY ALBANESE, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: Japan has lost a true patriot and a true leader. And Australia has lost a true friend.

Mr. Abe was a great statesman who made a difference. His vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific has had a profound effect on regional and global security. Even as the world shifted beneath our feet, Mr. Abe faced all of the challenges with a strength of character and an unbending resolve. He did not flinch. He did not weaken.

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BRUNHUBER: Australian prime minister there, paying tribute to Shinzo Abe. In Melbourne, buildings were lit up in the colors of the Japanese flag Saturday night to honor the late prime minister.

As regional neighbors, Australia and Japan have had a close and cooperative relationship for many decades and Abe's role was critical. Now parliamentary elections are underway in Japan just two days after Abe was brutally gunned down in broad daylight near Osaka.

At stake are 125 seats in the upper house of parliament. Abe was killed while campaigning for his Liberal Democratic Party Friday. U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken will travel to Tokyo on Monday to pay his respects. And we're also getting details about the suspect's statements to police. CNN's Blake Essig is joining us live.

Let's start there, with what we are learning about the accused killer.

What can you tell us?

BLAKE ESSIG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Earlier today, we actually got a glimpse of the man suspected of murdering former prime minister Shinzo Abe, when he was moved from a police station in Nara, where the assassination took place, to the district prosecutor's office.

It is important to note that, even though he has admitted to the shooting, at this point, he has not been formally charged. But Kyoto News has described him as totally ordinary and that he seemed mild mannered.

Not exactly the characteristics of a man who was determined to assassinate the former prime minister. But according to NHK, the 41- year-old suspect considered carrying out the crime a day earlier at a different campaign event but decided against it, because he was looking for a space that was less guarded.

Now NHK is also reporting that the suspect told police that he had originally planned to kill Abe using explosives before deciding to use a homemade gun instead. In the end, as we know, Abe was shot twice from several meters away, while delivering a speech in the city of Nara, in support of party candidates ahead of today's election.

BRUNHUBER: So let's talk about the election itself. It must have been sort of a somber day in a way.

What was the mood and what trends are emerging so far? ESSIG: Kim, the polls are now open across Japan.

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ESSIG: And while the former prime minister Shinzo Abe's assassination could affect turnout, it is unlikely to change the results. Abe's ruling party here in Japan was already favored to win a majority of the 125 upper house seats being contested.

And following the assassination just to kind of put an exclamation point on the fact that democracy would continue to thrive here in Japan, the current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, said that democracy will never yield to violence and that the election activities would continue.

And winners of today's election will spend the next six years inside Japan's parliament building, right there behind me.

BRUNHUBER: And going back to the assassination, I mean, Abe's security situation has been called into question.

What kind of fallout has there been so far?

ESSIG: In the days that have followed, many questions have been raised about the former prime minister's security. The chief of police in the prefecture where Abe was assassinated says he can't deny that there were problems with the security plan, that he takes responsibility for the failures that led to Abe's killing.

And according to NHK, a plan was put in place involving dozens of police officers and security personnel, many plainclothed officers, who were at the site at the time of the attack but didn't identify anyone as suspicious, only reacting after the two fatal shots were fired.

The national police agency, all they can do is now review security arrangements that were made for the former prime minister, obviously looking to the future to make sure something like this doesn't happen again.

BRUNHUBER: Appreciate the reporting, Blake Essig, thanks so much.

Two former British health secretaries have launched bids to replace Boris Johnson and become the next prime minister. Jeremy Hunt formally threw his hat into the ring Saturday. He was health secretary in 2018 and foreign secretary and party leader in 2019.

And Sajid Javid declared his candidacy as well. He quit his post as health secretary on Tuesday. Nine Tory MPs are now vying to be party chief. The opposition Labour Party is threatening to bring a vote of no confidence against Johnson as soon as Monday if he isn't forced out as caretaker prime minister immediately.

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BRUNHUBER: The Justice Department has released troubling new details about the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and the extensive planning by one right wing extremist group.

According to a new filing, at least one member of the Oath Keepers brought explosives to an area just outside Washington. And at least three chapters of the group held training camps before then, focused on military tactics.

Another member allegedly had a handwritten document headlined, "Death List." It included the name of a Georgia election official and their family member.

The revelations come just hours after a key witness testified before the January 6 committee, former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone. A spokesperson for the committee says he provided new information and, quote, "critical testimony." Marshall Cohen has details.

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MARSHALL COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Donald Trump's White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, spent more than seven hours testifying to the January 6th select committee. Now that in its own right was a real breakthrough for the panel, because Cipollone had resisted doing a formal deposition for more than a year.

But he finally agreed to testify recently after a series of damaging revelations at previous public hearings. Now throughout his tenure as White House counsel, Cipollone often found himself pushing back against the more extreme members of Donald Trump's orbit.

And he was a first-hand witness to several of the make-or-break moments, where American democracy was on the line.

For instance, Cipollone was there when some of Trump's outside advisers raised the idea of declaring martial law. He was there when some of Trump's advisers encouraged him to use the military to seize voting machines.

And Cipollone was there when Trump nearly appointed a well-known conspiracy theorist to look for unhinged voter fraud theories. Perhaps most importantly, Cipollone was in the White House on January 6th.

And previous witnesses have testified about his desperate efforts to stop Trump from marching to the Capitol. He also warned others inside the White House they would have blood on their hands if Trump did not intervene during the violent insurrection.

Now Cipollone's deposition was videotaped.

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COHEN (voice-over): And the committee will get its first chance on Tuesday to publicly release some of the footage. Tuesday's hearing is expected to focus on the far right extremist groups that were a huge part of Trump's efforts to overturn the election: the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters. Many of their members stormed the Capitol on January 6th. Some have

even been charged with sedition, an extremely serious crime. The hearing on Tuesday will delve into the connections between these militants and some of the key players in Donald Trump's orbit -- Marshall Cohen, CNN, Washington.

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BRUNHUBER: Emergency crews are scrambling to reach victims trapped under a collapsed building in Ukraine, after a Russian rocket strike took down an apartment building.

And abortion rights supporters protested in the U.S. capital this weekend, one of many demonstrations since the Supreme Court ruling two weeks ago. We'll have a report from Washington ahead. Stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: After a deadly Russian rocket attack in the east of Ukraine, at least four dead and five others injured after a rocket hit an apartment building in Donetsk. More than 30 others are believed to be trapped in the rubble of the collapsed five story building.

Meanwhile six missiles hit Mykolaiv earlier on Saturday, striking residential homes and businesses.

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BRUNHUBER (voice-over): This video shows where one missile fell, tearing a building to pieces. But Ukrainians are hitting back at a military target about 90 kilometers to the southeast. Ukraine says it blew up Russian military stockpiles near the city of Kherson.

In the northeast, have a look at this. Ukraine says that is the moment a Russian missile slammed in to Kharkiv on Saturday, injuring at least four people. Ukraine has pushed Russians away from the second largest city. But artillery attacks have increased.

And as the war grinds on, some Ukrainian recruits are cutting their teeth on military skills in the U.K.. They are part of the first group of volunteers to start a training group run by the British military.

The goal is to give combat skills to soldiers who have little or no military experience. Some 10,000 Ukrainians are expected to be trained in the coming months. The defense minister calls it the next phase in the U.K. support for Ukraine.

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BRUNHUBER: Scott McLean is monitoring the developments in Ukraine, including that rocket attack in Donetsk. And he is joining us from Kyiv.

Let's talk about that horrific attack that has people trapped in the rubble.

What more can you tell us?

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so the little information that we have is coming to us from the local governor. He says that there were two or three rocket strikes in this area. He believes two of them at least hit that apartment building.

As you mentioned, the latest numbers are that four people were killed, five injured, but the more concerning part of this is the people who may be trapped underneath that rubble.

If you look at the pictures from this area, it shows that an entire section of this apartment building has been completely reduced to rubble.

It is difficult to imagine anyone could have possibly survived that, though the rescue crews on scene say that they actually have managed to make contact with two people, who are trapped beneath there.

It is not clear how many more there might be. It seems like 30 or more than 30 is the worst case scenario. But remember this happened in the evening, so it is possible that not everyone was home.

It is also possible, given the rest of the building looks to be largely intact, that some people may have survived if they were in other parts of the building or if they were in the basement.

You will remember that strike on the theater back in Mariupol in March. It took a direct hit. And yet you had people who emerged alive from the basement. Now this strike is in an area that has taken a real licking from the Russians. They have struggled to move the front line forward into Donetsk.

So they have been shelling and bombing everything that they possibly can. Yesterday the Russians claimed that they hit a warehouse containing howitzers that are used by the Ukrainian military.

They also say that, in that same set of strikes, that they hit at least 30 Ukrainian soldiers, who had been shelling the Russian side of the front line from residential areas. As far as we know, these are completely separate incidents.

It is not clear -- it is not clear how many soldiers may have actually been killed. All we know from the Ukrainian side is they say the Russians actually struck a rail station or a piece of rail infrastructure, Kim.

BRUNHUBER: All right. And then, Scott, turning to the wider situation across the country, what is the latest?

MCLEAN: In the Donetsk region, it seems that the Russians are by and large in control of Luhansk. And so now local officials there say that there are some 300,000 people who are internally displaced.

Obviously the government has to figure out how to house all of those people. It is an enormous challenge. In the northern part of the country, the front line hasn't moved a whole lot in the last couple of weeks.

But we're seeing these missile and rocket strikes like the one that we saw yesterday. And then in the southern part of the country, this is the area where the expectation is the fighting is going to be the most intense over the next couple of days.

You mentioned it earlier. Both sides exchanged fire yesterday, hitting targets in Mykolaiv and then also Kherson, the Russian-occupied part of that area, about 30 miles or so away. So yesterday we had the Ukrainian officials warning people, who were in these parts of the occupied territory, that they ought to evacuate.

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MCLEAN: The Ukrainian effort to deoccupy these areas is going to result in a lot of fierce battles. And we're starting to see the situation heat up there already.

BRUNHUBER: All right. Really appreciate you keeping an eye on everything in Ukraine. Scott McLean, thanks so much.

The U.S. president signs an executive order protecting abortion access. But he says the most powerful response has to come from the ballot box.

And also turmoil in Sri Lanka, where demonstrators stormed the president's residence. More details on that next.

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BRUNHUBER: Welcome back. I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is CNN NEWSROOM.

The Sri Lankan president and prime minister say that they will resign after tens of thousands of people stormed their residences to protect the country's economic crisis.

And just now four cabinet members have also resigned. This comes after months of protests across the South Asian nation that reached unprecedented levels on Saturday.

At one point more than 100,000 people converged outside the president's palace, calling for his resignation. The prime minister says he is willing to make way for an all-party government to take over. Sri Lanka's parliamentary speaker is calling for calm.

[04:30:00] BRUNHUBER: For more, let's bring in Padma Rao Sundarji. She's the former bureau chief for "Der Spiegel," the German news magazine, and also author of this book, "Sri Lanka: The New Country," which includes accounts of her time covering their civil war.

Thanks so much for joining us here. You've written extensively about the country. The anger that has been brewing, it has been brewing for a while now.

But did you expect to see anything like this?

PADMA RAO SUNDARJI, FORMER BUREAU CHIEF, "DER SPIEGEL": Thanks for having me on your show. No, I've covered the country for 30 years and I've seen bloody scenes during the civil war.

But I haven't seen a public uprising of this size and magnitude and certainly not in a relatively affluent suburb of Sri Lanka. So it is new. But it has been going on for months and it was bound to come, the climax that you saw in the previous days, especially last night when the presidential official residence was stormed by protesters.

And later the prime minister's official residence was actually set on fire. So, yes, these are devastating scenes, the likes of which I've never seen before.

BRUNHUBER: Now Sri Lankans are facing shortages of everything, from medicine to fuel. Residents have been urged to stay home to save gas.

How bad are things on the streets for the average Sri Lankan?

SUNDARJI: It is terrible. I was there in May, I was reporting live for many channels out of there. And it was bad already. People waiting in lines (INAUDIBLE) rickshaw drivers, who had to earn to maintain their families.

And there was no gasoline, no cooking gas. So there were people, really elderly people, waiting in long lines that sometimes to 3-4 kilometers. On average, people waited for about two days then. And now people are waiting for five days and six days.

Schools have been shut for the past two weeks. There's no (INAUDIBLE) reopening. So kids are just sitting around, waiting for school buses that will never arrive, because there is no gasoline.

And the anger has just spilled out over, onto the streets and the protests, which were relatively peaceful up to now, have now turned -- now you are seeing what you are seeing. They're not very -- it's no longer called entirely peaceful.

There is an element of aggression there. And I'm afraid, if that aggression continues, Sri Lanka is likely to see great repercussions, like the armed forces, perhaps, coming out on the streets, just to control the crowds.

BRUNHUBER: But do things seem peaceful now?

Are you expecting things to flare up again?

SUNDARJI: I certainly am. I'm afraid that Sri Lanka is now going to -- there is sort of a lull before the storm, if you like, because the prime minister, as you said, has offered to resign. The president is going to resign.

But all that is going to take a couple of days because, up to, by then, the opposition, they have to put in place an interim administration that can carry on negotiations with the International Monetary Fund.

And as you know, that is the crux of the whole crisis. If those talks stall again, then the relief and any kind of bailout packages will just take that much longer. I'm afraid there is no unity within the Sri Lankan opposition.

And that is the key problem right now. So everyone is huddling, going into meeting rooms and trying to put together, patch together some sort of an administration. But I'm afraid it is not likely to be an administration that can put up a united face to the IMF and ensure that those talks continue.

So Sri Lanka is really staring at a starvation crisis and it is perhaps also staring at the risk of being called a failed state. And that is grave.

BRUNHUBER: Yes, that is what I was going to ask, if they don't get their act together here, what are the consequences?

You talk about starvation.

How serious, are they on the brink here?

SUNDARJI: Very serious because the problem lies, you know, in the fact that Sri Lanka manufactures little or nothing on its own. Countries like India or China, they have a large manufacturing base. In times of crisis, there are domestic goods to fall back on.

But Sri Lanka imports everything and you need the foreign exchange and is that the one thing that Sri Lanka does not have. It has run short of now. There are countries like India and China, which are helping Sri Lanka.

India has helped with nearly $4 billion of bridge financing and continues to help. Also one of the largest petroleum companies is actually refueling their passenger jets just to keep tourism, partially of value in Sri Lanka, because that is one of the big earners of revenue in Sri Lanka.

But as I said, if they don't meet the demands of the IMF, the IMF has also been quite wary.

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SUNDARJI: The IMF would like more guarantees to come forth from the Sri Lankan government and it also would like to see a Sri Lankan administration with an interim administration of a certain amount of stability.

So it really is up to the (INAUDIBLE). All eyes are on those very opposition politicians who have been promising to revive the economy should they be elected to power. So this is their golden opportunity. They put together an interim administration, they have got stick together. They've got to ensure that talks continue.

And there are some good names in the opposition, some well-known economists. So one can only hope that they come on board and (INAUDIBLE) the opposition has been marked by, that that continues or at least they put on the back burner now in order to continue with negotiations with the IMF.

Because if that doesn't happen, then I'm afraid -- you know, I really don't know how it will play itself out, if Sri Lanka is declared a failed state, because that will leave the country open to all kinds of negotiations and perhaps arm twisting, which may not be to the liking of the Sri Lankans themselves, given where they are located in the Indian Ocean and very strategic crossroads where shipping lanes converge.

So there is likely to be a lot arm twisting if they are named a failed state and is completely at the mercy of the big powers.

BRUNHUBER: There's so much at stake here. We'll have to leave it there. Thank you so much for your analysis.

SUNDARJI: Thanks, Kim.

BRUNHUBER: The U.S. President, Joe Biden, is defending his upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia, despite his campaign pledge to make the kingdom a pariah after the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

U.S. intelligence has strongly suggested the killing was ordered by the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. But in "The Washington Post" op-ed, the president argued the trip is vital to American interests.

He wrote, quote, "As president, it is my job to keep our country strong and secure. We have to counter Russia's aggression, put ourselves in the best possible position to out-compete China and work for greater stability in that consequential region of the world.

"To do these things, we have to engage directly with countries that can impact those outcomes. Saudi Arabia is one of them.

"And when I meet with Saudi leaders on Friday, my aim will be to strengthen a strategic partnership going forward that is based on mutual interest and responsibilities, while also holding true to fundamental American values," unquote.

Abortion rights supporters demonstrated in Washington, D.C., This weekend. They called on leaders to do everything that they can to protect access to the procedure. At least two dozen U.S. states, mainly run by Republicans, have moved to ban abortion outright or limit it severely in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. Among them Mississippi and Louisiana. Abortion services have ended in

both states, now that so-called trigger laws passed by state legislatures are in effect.

Meantime, North Dakota's only abortion clinic is suing to block enforcement of that state's trigger laws, arguing that it violates the state's constitution. The head of the National Women's Law Center talks about the legal uncertainty that exists in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.

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FATIMA GOSS GRAVES, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATIONAL WOMEN'S LAW CENTER: I hope that the Department of Justice will speak more and provide clarity, clarity for providers but also clarity that these rogue states can't undo things that are at the federal level.

And in the meantime, we are working our best to ensure that as many people are as safe as possible.

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BRUNHUBER: House Democrats will introduce two bills protecting abortion access this week. The president signed an executive order Friday and he said that abortion rights advocates have to do one thing overwhelmingly in November: vote. And Jeremy Diamond is traveling with the president.

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JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: One day after President Biden signed an executive order, seeking to protect women's access to reproductive health care, protests from abortion rights activists continuing, including in front of the White House.

Now the president, he wasn't there. He's here in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, for the weekend. But it's very clear, that growing call from abortion rights activists for the president to do more not abating, despite the new executive order.

That's largely because the new executive order the president signed Friday at the White House does direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to take steps to protect access to medication abortion (sic), to try to protect patient privacy and security.

It also establishes a new interagency task force that will include the Health and Human Services secretary as well as the attorney general.

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DIAMOND: But many of these steps are fairly vague.

And they also include actions that the president and HHS secretary have already underlined. And that's why you're seeing still a lot of frustration among abortion rights activists, who would like the president to take more decisive action. The White House's head of the Gender Policy Council, Jen Klein, she

made very clear on Friday that they understand those frustrations. But their power has limits.

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JEN KLEIN, DIRECTOR, WHITE HOUSE GENDER POLICY COUNCIL: I know it feels frustrating because we're taking action and then asking for more action. You can't solve by executive action what the Supreme Court has done.

The Supreme Court has taken away a constitutional right that was precedent for nearly 50 years and I think we all need to be mindful -- he is very mindful, we are all mindful -- that that can't be solved by executive action alone.

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DIAMOND: And that is ultimately the president's message as well, one we heard from him Friday, where he made clear, look, he's taking steps via executive action amid this pressure from abortion rights activists and, of course, his party's base.

But at the end of the day, he believes it's up to voters to get out in November and elect more pro-choice Democrats to Congress, who are willing to carve out the filibuster and then try and codify the rights that were previously enshrined in Roe v. Wade to ensure women do have access to abortion across the country -- Jeremy Diamond, CNN, traveling with the president in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

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BRUNHUBER: One of the most notorious Nazis is in a new documentary that debunks his claim that he was just following orders during the Holocaust.

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BRUNHUBER: New recordings of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann are being heard for the first time, part of a documentary about the SS colonel, hanged by Israel in 1962.

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BRUNHUBER: While alive, Eichmann downplayed his role in the Holocaust. But his own words tell a very different story. Hadas Gold reports.

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HADAS GOLD, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When Adolf Eichmann stood trial in 1961 in Jerusalem, he claimed he didn't know the extent of the Holocaust and was just following orders.

But a few years earlier, in 1957, while hiding in Argentina, Eichmann spent hours boasting about his role, all recorded on tapes meant for memoirs. Now after decades under wraps, the Israeli documentary, "The Devil's Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes," is allowing the world to hear Eichmann in his own voice, as actors reenact the recording sessions.

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GOLD (voice-over): In 1960, Eichmann was apprehended by Israeli agents in a covert operation, bringing him to Israel to stand trial, after which he was ultimately executed. Prosecutors knew the tapes existed. They had transcripts. But Eichmann claimed his words were distorted.

Director Yariv Mozer spent months convincing the anonymous donor, who had placed the tapes at the German archives, to give him access.

YARIV MOZER, FILM DIRECTOR: We are very afraid and very, until this day, of what will be the use of the real voice of Adolf Eichmann. And eventually they gave us the permission, because they knew that it was going to be handled in this -- in a good direction.

GOLD (voice-over): With so few survivors still alive to tell their stories, the filmmakers hope these tapes will make sure we never forget -- Hadas Gold, CNN, Jerusalem.

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BRUNHUBER: And a first at Wimbledon, we'll have details on what is at stake in the men's final after the break.

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BRUNHUBER (voice-over): This is a historic hotel on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, victim of a massive blaze on Saturday. The Veranda House bed and breakfast dates back to the 17th century.

Despite crews responding to the call, an off duty fire captain and bystanders reportedly ran inside to help get guests and staff out. The blaze spread to several homes nearby. The fire department believes all staff and guests were able to evacuate. But much of the hotel collapsed in the fire and the cause of the blaze is still under investigation.

And hundreds of firefighters in California are battling a wildfire that has shut down parts of Yosemite National Park. A mandatory evacuation order has been issued for nearby communities. As of Saturday, the Washburn fire has burned almost 1,200 acres.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is terrible. I mean, every fire is scary. And our hearts go out to all the folks that have been evacuated.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) afraid for the people in the town (INAUDIBLE). It is a really cute town. And it is very small. And then just heartbroken about the trees.

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BRUNHUBER: National Park Service crews are also on the scene, trying to protect the famed Mariposa (ph) grove, home to more than 500 giant sequoia trees, some believed to be more than 2,000 years old.

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BRUNHUBER: That wraps this hour of CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Kim Brunhuber. I'll be back with more news in a moment. Please do stay with us.