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Key Former White House Aide Cooperating in Georgia Election Probe; Putin Launches Wave of Attacks on Ukraine. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired October 10, 2022 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:02]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: And set your alarms. Ohio Senate candidate Tim Ryan, J.D. Vance debate tonight at 7:00 Eastern. It's the first of two scheduled debates, Ryan and Vance running neck and neck, according to the polls.

Thanks for your time on INSIDE POLITICS. Hope you come back tomorrow.

Boris Sanchez picks up our coverage right now.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Buenas tardes. Good afternoon, I'm Boris Sanchez in Washington, D.C. You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM. My colleague Ana Cabrera has the day off.

Up first: Russia is retaliating after a key bridge to Crimea is severely damaged, with Vladimir Putin unleashing on Ukraine. Wow, dozens of missile strikes just like those, some of them deadly, rocking multiple major cities, many that haven't been targeted in months, including the capital city of Kyiv.

Across the country, critical energy supplies were struck. There was widespread damage and power outages that are being reported. But it's these images, a playground that was also bombed, that provide a haunting reminder of just how brutal Vladimir Putin's bloody unprovoked war has become.

We have reporters and experts standing by to cover every angle of this.

Let's start in Kyiv with CNN's Frederik Pleitgen.

Fred, you are not far from where that playground was. What was the latest there on the ground in Kyiv?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Boris.

Well, it's still a very tense situation here in the Ukrainian capital. And certainly there's not many people who throughout really the entire part of the day were going out and venturing out. The mayor of the city, Vitali Klitschko, he told people to stay inside and to shelter if they don't absolutely have to go outside, simply because, for such long portions of the day, there were these missile strikes that were going on. And they started in the very early morning hours, I'd say about 15

minutes past 8:00 in the morning, which obviously is rush hour time in any city, and certainly this city is no exception at all. And that's when these cruise missiles and other missiles started raining down on the capital city.

And we're seeing some of the images on our screens right now. And I can tell you, it certainly was for a very long time quite unnerving to be on the receiving end of that. We were standing in one location at some point reporting from that location. We heard other impacts of missiles coming down on the capital city.

And the Ukrainians say -- it's quite a remarkable number -- that more than 80 cruise missiles were fired at the territory of Ukraine and more than 20 attack drones as well. It's quite interesting, because the Ukrainian Defense Ministry also released a video which they say shows one of their soldiers taking down one missile with a manned portable air defense system, a MANPAD.

That's essentially a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile system to intercept mostly helicopters and drones, but, in this case, apparently hitting one of those -- one of those missiles as well. The Ukrainians say they shot down a lot of those missiles, but obviously were not able to shoot down all of them. Some of them did hit their targets.

There was a power outage here in Kyiv for a while in parts of the city, so it certainly caused damage. It killed a lot of people here in the capital city as well. But the Ukrainians are saying it is not going to dampen their resolve, Boris.

SANCHEZ: And, notably, Fred, Vladimir Putin is saying that these strikes are a response to the attack you reported on this weekend, that bridge linking Crimea to Russia.

He's describing this as terrorism.

PLEITGEN: Yes, he certainly did.

And I saw him after he held a meeting of his National Security Council coming out. And Vladimir Putin said that also yesterday as well in his first remarks after the attack on that bridge took place. One of the interesting things that we have to point out is, the Ukrainians have not taken responsibility for the attack on the Kerch Bridge.

The Russians are saying that it was the Ukrainians. They have said that it was a truck that came in from abroad. We can see the big explosion that took place there on the Kerch Bridge.

And, of course, that is critical infrastructure for the Russians as well, but it's also one that is used for military purposes. The Russians use that to ferry tanks and other equipment onto the Crimean Peninsula, fuel, of course, as well for their war effort, and, clearly, Vladimir Putin very angry that that bridge was hit.

SANCHEZ: Our Fred Pleitgen reporting live from Kyiv. Thank you so much.

We want to pivot to Dnipro now, because that's where we find CNN's Nick Paton Walsh.

And, Nick, there were several targets that the Russians sent missiles to in that area, but it appears that some of them were not very well- thought-out, right?

[13:05:00]

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: It's really how to know here in Dnipro what they thought they were trying to hit.

And, certainly, at the scene of one of those strikes, two missiles hitting roughly the same place. They appeared to be targeting an abandoned telecoms building, if indeed that was what they thought they were trying to hit. Instead, one missile plowed into that, which appeared to have perhaps some people. And it may be an early morning security shift in there. Unclear what its strategic value was.

And then a second missile two minutes later hit the street just outside hitting a civilian bus, a public transport bus, on which five people were critically injured and many more required treatments. And it simply just shows the, I think, blundering nature of what the Kremlin referred to as precision weapons.

It's just unclear what they thought they were trying to hit. There has been damage, it seems, to Dnipro's electricity infrastructure. That has caused, according to local officials, at some point during the day 80,000 people to be without power. And we also saw that the mere fact you are firing cruise missiles of that size into a populated area, well, it causes a large amount of what you might refer to as collateral damage, damage to nearby apartment blocks.

One woman I spoke to who was busy clearing up the glass from her shattered balcony in a multifloor apartment block said that, between the first blast and the second, she rushed her children into the kitchen. She had, she thought, about two minutes between those two missiles, Russia using a very common tactic they have used here and they have used in Syria, where they follow one explosion, one attack immediately afterwards with another.

Critics say that's designed to try and get rescuers rushing into the scene to be hit by the second blast, but again here in Dnipro, surprise really as to what the potential target. It was a quick recovery, a lot of anger. We have seen reports of infrastructure hit in key cities across the south, attempts, it seems, or certainly warnings about these attack drones, anti-aircraft missiles, anti- missile systems doing some work, according to Ukrainian officials, but not stopping all of these missiles.

But I am still surprised, with these 80-plus cruise missiles sent, quite what the extent of the infrastructure Russia thought it was going to hit was and what their assessment of how successful this has been. They don't have an unlimited supply of these kinds of missiles. They are expensive. They are not, it seems, particularly accurate.

And this is clearly designed for a Ukrainian audience to feel fear -- it may not have worked -- but also to show to Russia's domestic audience that they still have some military might, despite months of persistent failure on the battlefield -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Yes. Yes, Nick, you noted the blundering nature of these supposed precision strikes, really kind of a microcosm of Russia's entire operation in Ukraine.

Nick Paton Walsh, Fred Pleitgen, thank you both.

Let's get some analysis now and perspective from retired U.S. Marine Colonel Andrew Milburn. He's actually in Kyiv. He's been in Ukraine training troops and rescuing civilians.

Colonel, first, these missiles targeting nearly every major city in Ukraine, one of them hitting a playground. You actually shared a picture of another strike that you say hit no discernible target. You have called this war morally unambiguous.

What do you make of the Kremlin's claim that these are in response to the bridge in Crimea and how indiscriminate these attacks are?

COL. ANDREW MILBURN (RET.), U.S. MARINE CORPS: Well, Boris, first of all, good evening. Good evening to all -- or, rather, good afternoon, good afternoon to all of your listeners.

And, Nick, I -- not that you need my kudos, but that was a great report, right on target.

What do I think of it? I'm not -- I'm not minimizing the collateral damage. Unfortunately, I was a witness to not one of the missiles landing, but immediate aftermath in Shevchenko Park. There were about 10 civilians who were killed in that particular strike.

So I'm not for a moment saying that this -- this is -- I'm casting it off as nothing. But it is a sign of desperation. I mean, think about it. You are -- these -- as your correspondent pointed out, number one, these missiles are extremely -- they're expensive.

The Russians don't have an inexhaustible supply. Rule of thumb for anyone, most basic rule of targeting is, be sure of your target, be sure that you can get that missile to its target, and plan -- shape the battlefield, as we are saying. Do something to address the air defense systems.

The Ukrainian air defense system, for a 30-year-old system, right, the S-300, put up a good show today, over 50 percent interception rate. Of course, everyone wants it to be 100 percent, but, again, it's an older -- it's an older system.

So, I agree absolutely with Nick, who I just heard, very poorly planned. It was an emotional response. When you make them emotional responses in war, there is simply no room for them. And all he's done, aside from exhaust or run low on cruise missiles supplies, we hope, the only thing he's done is, he has strengthened Ukrainian resolve.

[13:10:15]

I mean, you have been -- your correspondents will tell you, I mean, yesterday, the day before, the last two months, Kyiv has been like any major Western city. And it's almost frustrating for those of us who spend a lot of our time in the Donbass, where the fighting is taking place, to come back to Kyiv and just see life going on like normal.

I don't -- I don't think -- I'm not saying that the Ukrainians needed a wakeup call, but what this has done has absolutely reminded them why they are at war. And as we get near November, we get -- looking at G20, summit, we're looking -- probably Putin is going to start pitching the prospects of a cease-fire, a negotiated settlement.

We have seen the OPEC decision today, which means that countries like Germany are going to be -- are going to be under pressure as we approach winter. But what Putin has done, he's reminded not just the Ukrainians that there can be no cease-fire. This is me paraphrasing them.

There can be no cease-fire, there can be no negotiated settlement while Russian boots are on Ukrainian soil. But, more importantly, he's reminded the world, all right? And so countries -- again, I don't mean to pick on Germany, but European countries that are kind of looking askance at the upcoming winter and thinking it's about time that this war came to an end and we got back to normal, they are now in a bad position, very much so.

There were no military targets. Of course there weren't.

SANCHEZ: Right.

MILBURN: This is not shocking. This is part of his tactic. But he hasn't...

SANCHEZ: Yes, but the Russian...

MILBURN: ... learned the lessons of Dresden and Cologne, right?

I mean, I can tell you, so we -- the missile that landed in the middle of the playground in Shevchenko Park, I -- let me just put it this way. We are very familiar with that park. In fact, I have run -- mostly, a lot of us run through that park every day.

Sadly, that playground was kind of a bellwether, for me. If I saw kids playing there, it meant -- it was an indication that things were getting better. I remember the first time I saw kids again in our playground was mid-April. And it just -- it gave us all such an uplifting feeling.

Thank goodness -- I don't know this for sure. But thank goodness it was at 8:00. I haven't heard of children specifically being killed in that blast. But there were certainly a number of civilians who were killed in that area.

SANCHEZ: We're glad to hear that.

MILBURN: So, anyway, so my point is that, yes, the Ukrainians -- you just walk the streets. They are -- they're angry.

SANCHEZ: Right.

MILBURN: They have always -- there are undercurrents there, but they -- it's a reminder, we're all in, and Putin is not going to win.

Now, from Putin's part...

SANCHEZ: Sure.

MILBURN: ... this was strategically -- this was a strategic blunder.

I mean, it really was. And it was a sign, again, that he's kind of losing his grip. Trust me, I -- the dark days aren't over. I'm not jumping on the bandwagon here and saying, oh, hey, this -- everything from here forward is going to be easy. I am a little concerned about the -- I understand it.

I understand the optimism in the Western media. I understand there's a lot of wanting to believe stuff.

SANCHEZ: Right.

MILBURN: The Ukrainians have done very well. No one can doubt their courage.

But they're also in trouble. They don't have inexhaustible supply of manpower. They don't have an exhaustible supply of equipment. They have a regeneration problem. That is training their guys. They lost most of their instructors and trainers in the first few weeks of the war. They were -- all these guys, they thought it was going to be a short war. They were all in.

They cleaned out their schools. All their instructors went to the front.

SANCHEZ: Right.

MILBURN: And now they're having to train guys to replace the sizable number of casualties.

(CROSSTALK)

SANCHEZ: Yes.

MILBURN: I believe -- Boris, don't get me wrong. I believe Ukraine will win.

But the question is, how bloody and how much is the U.S. willing to be in or to hang around or -- not hang around, that's not fair.

SANCHEZ: Yes. MILBURN: But to be fully in or to kind of meter this support -- oh,

hey, we're going to give you M777s. Oh, now we will give you the HIMARS without the ATACMS, you know?

And so the Russians adapt their tactics, as any army does. And so there's no reason, I think, why we should make this a close call to the end. I get it. We want to bleed Russia dry, but, at the same time, we can really -- we need to believe in Ukrainian victory.

I mean, it will happen. What we -- collectively, I'm saying, United States...

SANCHEZ: Sure.

MILBURN: ... can control is how bloody that victory is.

SANCHEZ: That is a good point. Colonel Milburn...

MILBURN: So, it's not -- it's not a question of, oh, hey, we don't want to anger Putin because we're worried about escalation.

[13:15:00]

SANCHEZ: Sure.

MILBURN: Putin follows no rational chain of thought, aside from survival.

SANCHEZ: And it's clear from -- it's clear these attacks.

Colonel Milburn, we have to leave the conversation there. We appreciate your comments and your time. Thank you so much for joining us.

MILBURN: Yes, thank you, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Please be safe.

Let's get some more perspective now from retired U.S. Army Colonel Peter Mansoor.

Sir, thank you so much for sharing part of your day with us.

First, your reaction to Russia's escalation and some of the comments we just heard from the colonel about the intensity of these strikes.

COL. PETER MANSOOR (RET.), U.S. ARMY: So, I'm a military historian, and it reminds me a lot of Hitler's response to the first bombing of Berlin, which occurred during the Battle of Britain.

The British mistakenly hit a prestige target, and Hitler thought he had to respond in kind. So he shifted the focus of the Battle of Britain, to the destruction of London, which, of course, did not occur. But the Blitz really increased the morale of the British people to resist -- to resist Nazi aggression. And so this is very much of an accord. Putin saw a prestige target,

his $4 billion, 12-mile-long bridge across the Kerch Straits being targeted, and he responded with basically terror strikes against Ukrainian cities.

SANCHEZ: Colonel, I'm wondering what you made of what Colonel Milburn said regarding Putin potentially seeking a cease-fire or an off-ramp soon. How realistic is that possibility, do you think?

MANSOOR: You know, a cease-fire in a war only occurs when both sides feel vulnerable.

And, right now, Ukraine thinks they're winning. And Putin doesn't want to give up anything in order to achieve a cease-fire or a resolution to the conflict. So, I think a cease-fire is not in the cards in the foreseeable future. This war will go on until one side or the other believes it has more to gain from negotiations than it has to do -- than it can gain from continued fighting.

SANCHEZ: Colonel Peter Mansoor, thank you again for the time, sir.

MANSOOR: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Of course.

So, we're getting new information today about the Georgia investigation and efforts to overturn the 2020 election. We're going to tell you who is cooperating with that probe still ahead.

And the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, telling then-President Trump to help stop the violence on January 6, but now McCarthy apparently is telling the same officers who defended the Capitol that day that Trump didn't know his own supporters were the attackers. We have new audio you will want to hear.

Plus, I think it's fair to say that nobody likes getting a colonoscopy. A new study is painting a complicated picture of their effectiveness. And, yes, we're going there -- after a quick break.

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[13:22:18]

SANCHEZ: We have some new CNN reporting to share with you on the criminal probe unfolding in Georgia into former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The Fulton County district attorney has secured the cooperation of former top Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. You might recall she's already given gripping testimony during a January 6 Committee hearing.

CNN's Sara Murray broke this story, and she joins us now live with that new reporting.

Sara, this is significant. SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right.

My colleague Zach Cohen and I have talked to sources who said that Cassidy Hutchinson is cooperating with investigators in Fulton County. They're obviously looking into Donald Trump and his allies' efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And her cooperation could be interesting, in part because of her access in the West Wing and her proximity to working for former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

So, we saw from that congressional hearing she obviously had a lot of observations about what happened in the West Wing around the 2020 election. She could help shed light on what happened in the run-up and the aftermath of the phone call between the former president and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, where Trump asked Raffensperger to find the votes needed to win the election.

And she could know about this sort of surprise visit Mark Meadows made to a Georgia ballot audit site in 2020. And then, of course, there are things that she could know about that we don't know about publicly, Boris. So it is an interesting cooperator for prosecutors there.

SANCHEZ: And, Sara, the DA, Fani Willis, has said that this case would largely go quiet right before the midterm elections, given that she doesn't want any appearance of undue influence on those elections.

So what do we know about the direction of the case, given that now Cassidy Hutchinson is cooperating and the DA is still trying to get testimony from Mark Meadows and others?

MURRAY: Well, look, we do expect this to be a quieter period.

But we have also heard from sources that she wants to wrap things up pretty quickly after the midterm elections, that, as soon as December, we could begin to see indictments. And one of the people she's still trying to get testimony from is Mark Meadows. So, if that doesn't happen on the time frame she's looking at, it's possible Cassidy Hutchinson could fill in some of those gaps and things they may have wanted to get from Meadows, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Sara Murray with the new reporting.

Thank you so much, Sara.

MURRAY: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: CNN also has newly obtained recordings of the top Republican in the House, Kevin McCarthy, discussing what Trump knew and when he knew it as the attack on the Capitol played out.

The GOP leader's comments were secretly recorded last year during a meeting. And they completely contradict testimony presented during the January 6 hearings.

CNN's Whitney Wild joins us now with more.

Whitney, what is the story behind these recordings? And what do we hear McCarthy saying on them?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: Well, just to give a little bit of context, we knew that former D.C. Police Officer Michael Fanone, as well as Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, as well as Gladys Sicknick, the mother Brian Sicknick -- he was the Capitol Police officer who died after January 6 -- we knew that all three of those people had gone to Capitol Hill to speak with lawmakers in July of 2021.

[13:25:17]

But we were never able to go inside those meetings, that is until a police officer -- a former police officer, Michael Fanone, brought us the tapes, so you could hear for yourself what lawmakers were telling those three people, three people who were really badly damaged by the insurrection, but, of course, Gladys Sicknick losing her son, Officer Fanone suffering severe medical repercussions from that day.

Now you can hear what those lawmakers actually told them behind closed doors.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): When I called him, he wasn't watching TV.

GLADYS SICKNICK, MOTHER OF BRIAN SICKNICK: He knew what was going on. He knew what was going on.

People were fighting for hours and hours and hours. This doesn't make any sense to me.

MCCARTHY: I'm just telling you, from my phone call, I don't know that he did know that.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

WILD: However, here's evidence presented by the January 6 Committee that contradicts those statements.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

MCCARTHY: I have already talked to the president. I called him.

I think we need to make a statement, make sure that we can calm individuals down.

REP. JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER (R-WA): He finally got through to Donald Trump. And he said: "You have got to get on TV. You have got to get on Twitter. You have got to call these people off."

Do you know what the president said to him? This is as it's happening. He said: "Well, Kevin, these aren't my people. These are Antifa."

And Kevin responded and said: "No, they're your people. They literally just came through my office windows, and my staff are running for cover. I mean, they're running for their lives. You need to call them off."

And the president's response to Kevin, to me, was chilling. He said: "Well, Kevin, I guess they're just more upset about the election theft than you are."

(END AUDIO CLIP)

WILD: We have reached out to Kevin McCarthy's office, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Not the first time that there's a tape of Kevin McCarthy saying something different in private than what he has said out in public.

Whitney Wild, thank you so much for the reporting.

We have been told that colonoscopies can play a big role in preventing cancer, but do they really? A new study is raising some serious questions about their effectiveness.

Plus, speed-limiting technology, it could save lives out on the road, but is it going too far? CNN gives you a glimpse at how it works.

We will be right back.

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