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Primaries Set up Key November Races; Crist to Face Off Against DeSantis; Classified Documents Retrieved in January from Trump; Shan Wu is Interviewed about the Trump Documents; Zelenskyy Marks Independence Day; Biden Announces Ukraine Assistance. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired August 24, 2022 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. So glad you're with us. I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

We are following several major stories this morning.

First, voters in three key states putting the final pieces of the midterm puzzle together in what could be a bellwether for November. Democrat Pat Ryan is projected to win a special election for New York's 19th District. Ryan, and this is key, cast his campaign as a referendum on the Supreme Court's decision on Roe v. Wade. And he won. In Florida, Democrat's looking to unseat Republican Governor Ron DeSantis picked Charlie Crist, who's actually a former Republican himself, as their nominee this fall.

HARLOW: Also, new details surrounding former President Trump's handling of classified material. CNN has learned overnight that the National Archives told Trump's legal team months ago that it wanted intelligence agencies to conduct a damage assessment on more than 700 pages of documents found at Mar-a-Lago. We'll get into that.

Also, a big announcement expected today from the White House. Sources say President Biden could cancel up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt for some borrowers and also extend that moratorium, the pause, on loan payments through the midterms. Much more on that ahead.

We have got our correspondents in Florida and New York covering all the angles of Tuesday's primary.

So, let's begin this morning in New York with CNN national correspondent Jason Carroll.

So, Jason, you were out there yesterday as voters were going to the polls. You've got New York's 19th congressional district offering some maybe new clues about the potential impact of the overturning of Roe v. Wade on the midterms.

SCIUTTO: Yes. JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. Maybe new clues, but certainly a surprise for some folks who are up there watching what was going on up there in the 19th District. I mean even the man who came out on top, Pat Ryan, the Democratic candidate, said last night during his acceptance speech, he simply said, I honestly can't believe it.

I mean when you look at what happened there, I mean just to get the lay of the land, the 19th District, located upstate in the Hudson Valley, in a district that some would say leans to the conservative side, especially lately, this is -- was a campaign where national issues really took center stage during the campaign. Especially after Roe v. Wade.

The Republican candidate here, Marc Molinaro, really wanted this to be a campaign about the economy, about rising inflation, rising crime. But on the flip side of that, you had the Democrat, Pat Ryan, who made it very clear that this campaign was about a woman's right to choose.

Early this morning, I spoke to the communications director for the campaign, and she told me that they did notice a surge in energy in the district as of late. She said, though, but heading into the final days of the campaign, they still felt somewhat cautiously optimistic. But she said, but, in the end, what they were putting forth really resonated with voters. Last night Ryan was speaking to those who came out to support him, saying that the campaign was about securing fundamental rights.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAT RYAN (D), NEW YORK CONG.-ELECT: When the Supreme Court ripped away reproductive freedoms, access to abortion rights, we said, this is not what America stands for.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: So, again, big surprise up there in the 19th. Not so much of a surprise what happened here in the 12th District, where Jerry Nadler came out on top, handily beating Carolyn Maloney during that primary race where they went off and squared off against each other because the district had to be withdrawn (ph). It was a campaign, as you guys know, turned ugly at one point with Maloney accusing Nadler of being senile at point during the campaign. Nadler, though, was the one who ended up having the endorsements of "The New York Times" and people like Chuck Schumer. And he said, at the end of the day, this was just about running a better campaign.

Guys, back to you.

SCIUTTO: One thing interesting about that upstate New York district is that the Democrat won by a wider margin than Biden won in 2020. We'll see if that does prove to be a bellwether.

Jason Carroll, good to have you up there.

All right, now to Florida. Democrats have picked Charlie Crist to face off against Republican Governor Ron DeSantis this fall. It's the second time in eight years that voters in the sunshine state have elected Crist as their nominee for governor. We should know, Crist himself used to be a Republican.

CNN correspondent Leyla Santiago following all of this from St. Petersburg, Florida.

Leyla, it's a big race, highly anticipated, as Democrats try to curb DeSantis' hopes, not just for Florida, but potentially nationally for the Republican nomination for president.

[09:05:12]

LEYLA SANTIAGO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. One campaign staffer that I spoke to last night as they were partying, celebrating the win, said now the real work begins. And already today, even on CNN, we heard Congressman Charlie Crist making his argument, making his case to a national audience, saying, look, Governor Ron DeSantis, he is widely accepted to be someone who has his eye on the White House for 2024. And Crist is saying he wants to stop him in November. Sort of slow him down. And is asking Democrats outside of Florida to help him do that. So, we're already seeing him try to raise money to go up against DeSantis in November, who, by the way, has $132 million saved for that general election.

So, he's not wasting time in fund-raising and he's certainly not wasting time in attacking Governor Ron DeSantis.

Listen to him and what he said last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CHARLIE CRIST (D-FL), CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR: This guy wants to be president of the United States of America and everybody knows it. However, when we defeat him on November 8th, that show is over!

The truth is, this governor couldn't care less about your freedom. He's abusive. He is a bully. He is a bully. And he's dangerous. He is dangerous. He imitates the worst authoritarian leaders on the globe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANTIAGO: And so Crist is really pointing to a lot of the culture wars that we've seen here, pointing to abortion, voters rights, things that he thinks will energize the Democrats here and beyond Florida to help him win.

For Governor DeSantis' point, he said that this was not surprising. He thought Crist was going to win. And he will - he will continue to run on his Covid measures and keeping Florida open.

You'll likely also see Crist try to tie himself to Val Demings, who ran last night and won by a lot in the primary for the Senate race. She will now go up against Marco Rubio in November. And he has already put out ads that you'll see on his Twitter account where he's questioning her record and has law enforcement doing that as well.

Jim. Poppy.

HARLOW: All right, Leyla Santiago, thank you for your reporting, being there for really key races. We appreciate it very much.

Meantime, a federal judge has set this Friday as a deadline for former President Trump to clarify his request for this special master to oversee the review of evidence gathered in that Mar-a-Lago search.

SCIUTTO: This as CNN is learning that the number of classified documents kept there were more than known. One hundred classified documents, comprising of more than 700 pages in total, some with the highest level of classification, they were retrieved in January, months before the search of the home. This according to a newly released letter.

The National Archives told the Trump legal team it wanted intelligence agencies to do a damage assessment of those documents being kept where they were.

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

So, to be clear for folks at home, and there's just so much to follow, this is classified stuff that was already returned in January, in addition to what they picked up in the search more recently. So, tell us what we know about this letter.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Indeed it was.

So, what we're learning now is that there was this newly released letter the archives had sent to Donald Trump's lawyers back in May. Throughout much of 2021 and into the spring there was this back and forth happening where Donald Trump's team was trying to delay or put to bed this criminal investigation that was simmering under the radar. So by May 10th, the archives had these initial 15 boxes of documents back from Mar-a-Lago, and they were going through them.

They realized there was a significant amount of classified records in that collection, more than 100 classified documents, totaling more than 700 pages, and some of those materials were marked with highly sensitive designations, SCI, SAP, that's Sensitive Compartmented Information and also Special Access Program records, the type of designations that really locked down where those records can be kept and where they should be accessed.

And because these records had these national security implications to them, the FBI and the intelligence community needed to go through them, both for the criminal investigation, as well as for looking at how damaging this was potentially to the country.

So, the archives was writing to Trump's lawyers to work out that access. Ultimately, investigators subpoenaed these boxes from the archives, same branch of government, to be able to access them. But this letter really illustrates how concerning and how tricky this Mar- a-Lago situation was for the federal government, even months ago, and that negotiation was happening with Trump's team where the Biden White House itself was largely staying out of it.

[09:10:00]

Of course, those weren't the end of the story here. Just two weeks ago the FBI found nearly a dozen boxes more with classified documents marked within them.

Jim and Poppy.

HARLOW: Katelyn, a really significant development.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: We learned so much from this letter.

Thank you very much.

Let's talk about all that we've learned. Joining us now, defense attorney, former federal prosecutor, Shan Wu.

Shan, good to have you.

All right, 700 sheer - there's this sheer number of pages here, 700 pages, 100 plus classified documents in those boxes that were retrieved in January, by the way. And what we know now from this letter too is they included materials marked Sensitive Compartmented Information, meaning they had to be viewed in a SCIF, a really secure government facility, and Special Access Program documents, that's a classification that significantly limits who can see those documents.

I mean, I remember Andy McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI, telling us a few weeks ago there were some of those documents of that classification that even he couldn't see and certainly couldn't bring to his office.

How does all of this impact the Justice Department's investigation, in your opinion?

SHAN WU, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I think it shows that the Justice Department has been so careful here, reflecting Garland's approach to things, trying to be very methodical and really trying to actually make a record that they were bending over backwards, to be reasonable to Trump and trying to be differential.

Now, I don't know -- I personally agree with that approach. As Katelyn's report was just discussing, they're negotiating over access that they shouldn't have had to negotiate at all. I mean there's no reason for him to be having to grant access to it. So, the fact that they were so concerned about the sensitivity to me indicates they probably should have moved a little bit faster. But they certainly tried their darnedest to give him every chance.

SCIUTTO: There's been a lot of attention focused now on Trump's request for a special master to review these documents. Now, it's our understanding that the DOJ already has a team, it's known as a filter team or a taint team, going through the documents, part of which is to look for documents that might be -- that might have some attorney/client privilege.

Does that accomplish already what Trump's team is demanding here?

WU: It doesn't accomplish what Trump's team is demanding, but it does accomplishes what needs to be accomplished, which is, it doesn't really make any sense for Trump to be asking for any kind of filtering on executive privilege. Again, reflects the misunderstanding of executive privilege as being his own privilege, like an attorney/client privilege would be.

Executive privilege exists to protect the deliberations of the executive branch. This is the executive branch trying to get its documents back and looking at them. Attorney/client privilege, that's proper to have a taint team to do that, meaning a filter team that might have to view those documents and say these are attorney/client privileged, they should be walled off from the rest of the investigatory team.

HARLOW: Just a final question, Shan, on this letter. OK, nowhere in this letter is there a reference at all to what the former president alleged, which is that there was this blanket, you know, declassification of all this stuff, right? So, nowhere. And then also I wonder what you think the letter from the National Archives does to the president's narrative that we were totally compliant and cooperative the whole time. And they gave him like months here.

WU: Yes, I think it completely destroys his narrative. I mean the letter makes very plain that they have not been compliant. And I think it is very telling that there's no mention of the declassification, not to mention this idea he can wave a magic wand and declassify everything would even work or be proper.

But it looks like, from the evidence that we're seeing in these released documents and this letter, is that he likely did not actually declassify any of this. And on top of that, of course, as you know, even if they were not classified, that does not affect the concern with the national security issues.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Yes, the law states that if it is something threatening to U.S. national security, regardless of how a former president might define it, it's relevant.

Shan Wu, great to have you on.

WU: Good to see you.

HARLOW: Thank you, Shan.

SCIUTTO: Still ahead, a federal judge in Texas has blocked guidance from the Biden administration about abortion. What it means for women facing life threatening situations.

Plus, Ukraine's president is warning of a new barrage of Russian attacks as the country marks its independence day. U.S. officials warning as well. We're going to take you to Ukraine live. This as the U.S. announces billions of dollars in more aid. HARLOW: Also ahead, the Uvalde, Texas, school board will decide

tonight whether to fire school police chief Pete Arredondo. We're going to speak with one of the state lawmakers helping investigate this mass shooting and also what happens next.

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[09:18:52]

HARLOW: So, today not only marks 31 years of Ukrainian independence, it has also today been six months since the day that Russia launched its unprovoked war on the country. Jim, of course, you were there. And today, in an emotional speech, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the nation was reborn the day Russia invaded.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, UKRAINE (through translator): We're holding on for six months. It's difficult for us. But we clenched our fists, fighting for our fate. Every new day is a new reason not to give up because, having gone through so much, we have no right not to reach the end. What is the end of the war for us? We used to say peace. Now we say victory.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: I do not forget that call in the middle of the night when the bombs started falling.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Let's bring in CNN's senior international correspondent David McKenzie, also CNN Pentagon correspondent Oren Liebermann, to discuss the latest.

David, I wonder if I could begin with you in Ukraine.

The warnings have been very clear. We've had Russia threatening to carry out major attacks today. We've had U.S. officials warning U.S. citizens there.

[09:20:04]

What are Ukrainians' concerns today and are they bracing themselves?

DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think, Jim, if you look behind me, that shows you on some level the level of concern. Because for many months now, Ukrainians have felt under threat. And you see this parade of tanks and APCs and rocket launchers behind me.

The authorities have put this -- they have more than 30 here on the main street here in Kyiv, near the Maidan Square, and they've used this as a symbolic moment because they believed Russians by now would have wanted to have their own military parade, having taken over leadership, or would put in a proxy leadership for Ukraine. And so this is the parade they are giving me (ph).

The leadership now, Zelenskyy, has warned people to not gather, told them to be careful, because there is, according to them, a very real threat of missile attacks here on the capital and in other parts of the country. But the evidence is behind me that Ukrainians just want to get on with their lives. They are inured somewhat to this fighting.

You know, yesterday, Jim, I asked the president whether he was worried that there would be a lack of support as this war grinds on. Here's what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINE (through translator): We need to be clearly aware that as soon as the world becomes tired of this war, that's going to be a great threat to the whole world and (INAUDIBLE) annihilating Ukraine, so we are grateful to - for any kind of assistance. We need more of it, that's true.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCKENZIE: Well, overnight, more assistance appears to be coming and they're certainly grateful for that here. But this front line has stayed relatively static for many weeks now, Jim, since you were in Ukraine. There was dramatic scene around Kyiv. Now it's a relentless bombardment in east and the south and the northeast, with static front lines, soldiers in foxholes, grinding it out. You know, this war is not showing any signs of stopping anytime soon.

Jim. Poppy.

HARLOW: David, thank you very much.

And to Oren at the Pentagon.

I mean, today, obviously, marking the importance of this day, the U.S. is announcing $3 billion in new military aid for Ukraine. That's actually the largest security package of assistance that they've given to date. Can you talk about what's included? And also, as I understand it, it's going to take, you know, a matter of months for much of this to reach Ukraine.

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Exactly. To put this in perspective, this is about three times larger than the previous largest security assistance package, and that was a billion dollars. That came just a couple of weeks ago. So, earlier this month. This now $2.98 billion to be exact, announced by President Joe Biden in the White House earlier today, to mark the six-month anniversary of the war, and to mark Ukraine's independence day.

In terms of what's in here, we do expect more details from the Pentagon a little later on this afternoon. But we know there are air defense systems, as well as counter drone systems and crucially artillery and ammunition. A lot of this is expected to be ammunition, and that speaks, Poppy, to your point, and to David's point, that the White House and the world, for that matter, don't see this ending anytime soon. And it is the brutal artillery bombardment warfare that will continue. And that's why this is important, to make sure Ukraine is able to stay in that fight. Ammo from the beginning has been a crucial component for them, and that's what we expect to see addressed here.

Now, since the beginning of the war, so, six months ago now, the U.S. has given approximately, or at least committed approximately $13 billion in aid to Ukraine. And it has essentially picked up the pace. We have this $3 billion. There was $775 million last week. A billion a week before that. So, this continues.

There is a crucial distinction here, and, Poppy, you hinted at this, this isn't a presidential drawdown, which means it's not pulled immediately from U.S. stocks that are - that are ready to go. This has to be contracted with arms manufacturers. This will take time, just like the war.

SCIUTTO: And it's a good point. It shows that it's not just getting things that already exist, but basically manufacturing new weapons, right, to get to the Ukrainians.

Oren Liebermann, at the Pentagon, David McKenzie, good to have you there on the streets of Kyiv, thanks so much.

Well, in another battlefield, the U.S. military says it carried out precision air strike on Iran-backed groups inside Syria. President Biden ordered the strikes on bunkers used by groups tied to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It comes a week after rockets struck near a military base housing U.S. troops in northeastern Syria, Poppy, interesting, as negotiations continue with Iran over the nuclear program.

HARLOW: Yes, well, that's a great point. The context of it all, right? And where they said they got -- progressed in the last week.

Look, authorities tell CNN they monitored 13 bunker used by those groups for ammunitions storage and logistics support and ultimately struck nine of them. U.S. Central command said in a statement that no one was killed, but two groups on the ground put the death toll between six and ten people. CNN has not yet been able to independently verify those claims.

SCIUTTO: Coming up next, the heated matchup now set for the governor's race in Florida in the fall could give us an early preview of what issues will take center stage more broadly in 2024.

[09:25:02]

A former Republican congressman from Florida joins me live with his perspective.

HARLOW: All right, we're also moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street this morning. Futures looking pretty mixed there, relatively flat, after a third negative day for the major indices. The Dow and the S&P 500. Investors really waiting to hear from Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell. His remarks coming at the end of this week, looking for any clues on what the Fed's going to do in terms of rates.

We'll keep an eye on all of it. Stay with us.

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[09:30:00]