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British Prime Minister Liz Truss Resigns After Just 44 Days on the Job; Trump Weighs Letting FBI Search Mar-a-Lago Again; Martial Law in Effect for Four Illegally Annexed Regions of Ukraine. Aired 10- 10:30a ET

Aired October 20, 2022 - 10:00   ET

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

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BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning, everyone. I'm Bianna Golodryga.

We are following several major stories for you this morning, including a political earthquake in the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Liz Truss resigning this morning after just six weeks in office and a series of missteps on the economy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LIZ TRUSS, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: We set out a vision for a low tax, high growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit. I recognize, though, given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the conservative party.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLODRYGA: Plus, a CNN exclusive, lawyers for former President Donald Trump now considering allowing federal investigators to search Mar-a- Lago again. And newly released emails between Trump and his former lawyer proving his voter fraud claims were indeed bogus, a federal judge calling it evidence of a conspiracy to degree fraud the United States.

But let's begin this hour with the breaking news out of the U.K., Prime Minister Liz Truss resigning after six weeks, 44 days in office.

Our team is following this breaking story. CNN International Correspondent Scott McLean is outside of 10 Drowning Street and CNN's Richard Quest is standing by as well.

Scott, first to you, six weeks in office and gone after a disastrous budget plan. So, what happens next?

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Bianna. Yes, that is a great question. We will have a new prime minister by the end of next week. I think that Liz Truss tried everything that she possibly could though to save her premiership. That also started to go wrong from the minute that she announced her disastrous economic plan. Essentially, a series of tax cuts, some of them for the wealthiest people in this country, amidst a cost of living crisis. And it seems like that was too much for Truss to come back from. First, she tried rolling back part of the plan, that wasn't enough. So, then she swapped chancellors, picked a new one from the more moderate wing of her party. That wasn't enough. He rolled back almost everything in that economic plan. That still wasn't quite enough. She seemed to be on more level footing yesterday after prime minister's questions but then we have more chaos.

The resignation of her home secretary, who not suddenly suggested that she ought to follow her out the door, that the prime minister ought to follow her out the door, and then chaos inside of parliament yesterday, when Liz Truss was trying to cajole her party into voting against a labor motion and some opposition lawmakers said that they saw shouting, they saw bullying and they saw some people being physically man handled into voting along with the government.

And even her brand-new secretary seemed to indicate that not long ago, before he took the reins of this job, that she had a Mt. Everest to climb in order to come back from the hole that she was in. Her party was deeply, deeply unpopular. If an election were to be held today, the conservative party would have gotten half, maybe less than half of the support of the labor party.

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Labor, the opposition, is now calling for a general election given that they don't think that the conservatives have a mandate to governor on. So, this is what the leader of the labor party said earlier in a statement, saying, they do not have a mandate to put the country yet through another experiment. Britain is not their personal fiefdom to run how they wish. We must have a chance at a fresh start. We need a general election now.

Obviously, the last straw that ended with Liz Truss' resignation was a meeting with the chair of the 1922 committee backbench M.P.s , the M.P. who ultimately have the power to force a leadership challenge, and, clearly, Liz Truss did the calculation to try to figure out whether or not it was in her interest or in her country's interest to try to fight a leadership challenge or whether she should go quietly. And that is obviously what they chose to do.

The atmosphere here, Bianna, I have to say, it feels a lot like the atmosphere in the final days of the Boris Johnson as prime minister. The question now, of course, is what comes next and can the conservative party find a candidate that can satisfy both the right- wing of the party and the more moderate wing of the party as well.

GOLODRYGA: And, Richard, we're hearing that Boris Johnson, not surprising to many, has raised his hand to come back and succeed Liz Truss after just 44 days in office. But, really, one can't overstate the damage that ensued following the introduction of her economic plan. It sent the pound going down drastically, markets tumbled as well, a pension plan near disaster in the country. The Bank of England was forced to intervene and you even saw the United States really stress test our system in case we could possibly experience something similar. Talk about that impact that has really had for the country globally on an economic front. [10:05:00]

RICHARD QUEST, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: This was, Bianna, a totally utterly, completely self-inflicted wound. The prime minister didn't put this policy to cabinet. She didn't put it through the testing measures of the budget responsibility team, she didn't do it with anybody. She and the chancellor announced it out of dogma and out of some right wing views on free markets, and they didn't make sure the markets were ready. So, not surprisingly, interest rates went up as the Bank of England then tried to bring them down and failed necessarily to do so.

Why this is particularly significant for global markets? Let's take for example the U.K. Unlike the United States, where people have mortgages that are fixed for 15, 20, 30 years, in Britain, most mortgages are only fixed for a few years. So, there are millions of people who this year will suddenly find their mortgage double, not because of Vladimir Putin or because of much of anything else, but because of this government's policies. There is going to be massive difficulty, financial difficulties as a result. And, again, this was all because of a policy that wasn't put forward.

So, you know, Liz Truss, in being the shortest prime minister in history, as she leaves number 10 next week, they will be sweeping up the broken glass for months and Britains will be paying the cost of it for years and the reputation of the country will be in tatters for a great deal longer.

GOLODRYGA: Richard, what does this mean for the special relationship between the United States and the U.K.? I believe that she wasn't even in office long enough for President Biden and Liz Truss to meet in person. What does that do for the relationship and for partnerships for crises around the world, including the war in Ukraine?

QUEST: Now, I think there will be a big difference here and it is important to stress this. The incompetence that we've seen from the prime minister on domestic political issues versus the policies on Ukraine, on dealing with Putin, on the Middle East, all of the other things, for instance, the defense secretary has been in Washington meeting his counter parts to discuss greater cooperation over Ukraine, greater cooperation on cybersecurity. You have got the new pact with Australia that is coming in. You've got the very close security links. So, I'm not worried about that. I think that that is pretty rock solid.

What I would say is how that the U.S., the administration looks at the U.K. and says, can you be a reliable partner elsewhere? Can we have shared values? Yes. But are you strong enough to execute them? At the moment from Liz Truss, it is no. So, there is a lot of damage.

Look, in 35 years of covering this sort of stuff, I've never seen anything remotely bordering the level of incompetence and simple mismanagement and malmanagement that we've seen at the British government in the last three weeks.

GOLODRYGA: And from everything I've read, from experts, you're not the only one with that assessment, which ultimately led us to the point where we are right now.

Scott McLean, I don't know if that was Larry the Cat behind you that I saw at 10 Downing, but there's one constant that looks like the cat may have lasted longer than the previous two prime ministers of that residence.

Scott McLean, Richard Quest, thank you so much.

Well, now to a CNN exclusive. Sources say former President Trump's legal team is considering a less antagonistic relationship with the Justice Department and could possibly allow federal investigators back for a second search of Mar-a-Lago.

Let's get right to CNN's Gabby Orr with more on this. So, Gabby, what more are you learning?

GABBY ORR, CNN REPORTER: Bianna, facing a number of investigations that remain ongoing, the former president and his team are looking for a way to cooperate with DOJ to accommodate their interests in recovering additional documents in the probe down at Mar-a-Lago.

We are told by sources yesterday that the former president's team has contemplated even allowing members of the Justice Department, federal investigators, to return to Mar-a-Lago for a supervised search, something that would essentially involve Trump's attorneys accompanying them throughout the property as to verify whether or not there were additional documents in the former president's possession at his Florida resident.

Now, this is just one possible topic on the table that is being discussed by Trump's attorneys. There have been no firm decisions made, but we are told there has been a notable shift in Trump's strategy with this probe in particular. They had begun this very adversarial toward the Justice Department, not wanting to cooperate.

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Trump had both enunciated behind the scenes and publicly that he felt these documents were his personal property, and he did not need to return them to the Justice Department, calling it a witch hunt, claiming that the FBI search that took place in August at Mar-a-Lago was a sham. But now they're looking for an out. They're looking for a way to cooperate to swiftly resolve this issue, as one former Trump aide told me, they want to get this resolved, and the sooner the better.

But that is not a strategy that is particularly welcomed among all of Trump's advisers. Some of them have pointed to the cash infusion and fundraising uptick that he saw after the FBI search, his ability to go out and the stump and claim that he is continuing to be a target of political persecution and that cooperating would only undermine the argument that they had been previously making. Somebody told me yesterday, a Trump adviser said that inviting the DOJ to lunch is risky, inviting them back to Mar-a-Lago just makes no sense, whatsoever. So, there is a bit of discussion that is ongoing. No firm decisions have been made. But this is at least one possibility that Trump's team has talked about as they look to cooperate with Justice Department officials, Bianna.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, interesting that they're even contemplating do this. Gabby Orr, thank you.

Well, a federal judge now says President Trump knew his 2020 voter fraud claims were false but he continued to push election lies in public and more importantly in court.

Joining me now is Elie Honig, CNN Senior Legal Analyst and former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Elie, great to see you.

So, this was the argument that the January 6 committee had been making through all of their hearings, but now you have a judge really siding what he says are facts via emails. And you've noted one of the most important things in this filing from Judge Carter was that President Trump knew alleged voter fraud claims were wrong. Why did that stand out to you?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Bianna, you're exactly right. One of the key thrusts of the entire January 6 committee presentation is Donald Trump knew, here is the all of the people who told him he had lost. How many people did we see testify about that? That was one of the main points they are trying to make. And now we see a judge not just concluding that Donald Trump knew but describing emails that the judge has said now these have to go over to the committee.

Now, in the opinion, the judge doesn't actually show us the emails, we don't see them, but the judge describes them. In one of the categories of emails, the judge says, these emails demonstrate that Donald Trump knew that his claims of voter fraud were false, therefore, they go over to the committee. So, the committee has those emails, prosecutors can get them really quickly if they don't have them already. That could be crucial evidence as to his state of mind.

GOLODRYGA: So, what about the argument that Eastman has been making, which is a valid one for most attorneys and clients, and that is their privilege right?

HONIG: Yes. So, the attorney/client privilege is a good starting point here. And, by the way, the vast majority of the documents at issue were, infact, covered by attorney/client privilege. But there is an exception to the attorney/client privilege called the crime fraud exception.

So, if an attorney and a client are talking strategy, what do we do in court, what should we argue, how should we approach this case, that is all privileged, it is confidential, nobody gets to see that. But if they cross a line and start talking committing a crime or an ongoing crime, hey, why don't we do this crime together, how should I commit this crime, and the attorney is giving advice, that is not covered by the privilege.

And so the judge here looks at a universe of 536 documents and says most of them are covered but eight of them, eight of these emails, are not covered because of the attorney/client exception. So, in a sense, Eastman prevailed on most of his claims, but, boy, to have eight documents singled out by a judge as potentially evidence of a crime, that is a big deal.

GOLODRYGA: So, this could go over to the committee now, that it could spark the interest of the DOJ as well in their investigation, but there is also an investigation, a criminal investigation ongoing in Georgia.

HONIG: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: Could these -- this information, this new filing, be submittable to those prosecutors there?

HONIG: For sure. The Georgia prosecutor, the D.A. in Fulton County can get these documents as well, just as the same as DOJ can. And it is important to the Georgia investigation too because the crux of the investigation in Georgia is did Donald Trump knowingly try to steal this election. Did he ask Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, when he said, find me those votes? Did Trump already know that he had lost, did he know that his claims of fraud were untrue? And these documents, as described by the judge, actually pre-date that call that Trump made to Raffensperger.

So, prosecutors may be able to look at the emails. Again, we haven't seen the actual emails, but say, look, he knew, according to these emails, he had lost and yet he still calls up the secretary of state for Georgia and urges him to find these votes when he knew he had lost. Prosecutors could look at that as crucial on intent.

GOLODRYGA: Quickly before you go, your thoughts on Gabby' reporting there that the Trump legal team is at least contemplating inviting the DOJ down to Mar-a-Lago and allowing them to search once again for documents. I guess, not being as -- as so much friction, right, between the DOJ and Trump as currently exists now.

HONIG: Yes. Count me a bit skeptical that Trump's team will actually go down this road. There have been many things over the years that Trump and his team have been considering. He's considered testifying. He's considering cooperating. It never seems to pan out.

The other thing is Trump's team seems to be assuming here that it is up to them.

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It is not. Really, it ought not be. If DOJ wants, they can go get another search warrant. They don't have to be politely escorted around Mar-a-Lago. They can go to wherever they need to go. So, it's really just a question of what type of will DOJ has here.

GOLODRYGA: Elie Honig, thanks so much for joining us, great to see you on set.

HONIG: All right.

GOLODRYGA: And still to come this morning, martial law now in effect across regions Russia illegally annexed in Ukraine, as Russian officials try to relocate thousands of people in Kherson. We're live in Kyiv with the very latest.

Plus, less than a week out from early voting, Texas wants to take a closer look at how one of the state's largest and more liberal counties runs its voting process, a move some believe is political motivated.

And later, the search intensifies for a missing Princeton University student who hasn't been seen in nearly a week.

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GOLODRYGA: Overnight, Ukrainian officials reporting a Russian rocket struck a children's school in Zaporizhzhia, part of wave of ramped up Russian attacks across Ukraine. And in the Kryvyi Rih region, reports of serious destruction after more strikes targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

CNN's Nic Robertson is live in Kyiv, Ukraine. So, Nic, two major things beginning today. We have got the four regions of Ukraine illegally annexed by Russia now under martial law, and across several regions, particularly there in the north controlled blackouts as Ukrainians navigate serious hits on their infrastructure continuously. What is the overall mood since there, Nic?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: There is a sense of resilience, there's a sense that things are going through change, that the war has entered another phase. In Kherson, the Russian- installed deputy governor there said that 15,000 people were evacuated yesterday. And I think best to put the word evacuated in parenthesis because the population there under martial law is not getting a lot of choice.

What we've been able to see video clips coming out of Kherson today, far fewer people are leaving. But that same deputy Russian-installed governor there is vowing that the Russian forces will come back and continue to take more territory, that they will go as far as taking the city of Odessa on the Black Sea Coast. So, there is no sense from this particular official that they're on the back foot but I think the evident belies that.

And the country, the people of Ukraine are somewhat being put on the back foot in terms of electricity supplies. As you say, there are now controlled power outages, up to four hours in some areas. Kharkiv, Sumy, as well, just to name two regions in the north, where they are now having these controls, electricity controls, with areas without water, some areas where street lighting will be switched off, some areas with sort of electrical-driven public transport, trolley buses won't be running.

And the advice the government is giving to people is quite serious and stunning. They are saying, store water and stock up with blankets and socks, charge your phones, keep your power banks charged up and ready. They really are preparing the nation for the possibility that the electrical situation could get worse.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs here say they're working with NATO and the European Union to try to get energy-generating supplies into the country. But as we know, these repairs and new equipment take time. And that seems to be what Ukraine doesn't have in a way at the moment because the Russians, in the space of just about ten days, have imposed a quite severe electricity restriction on the country that just was unimaginable two weeks ago, almost.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, energy blackmail, just as colder weather there sets in. Nic Robertson, thank you.

Well, the U.S. State Department says it now has abundant evidence that Russia is using Iranian-made drones to strike civilian targets in Ukraine. It comes after Ukraine's military says it shot down 13 kamikaze drones over the Mykolaiv region.

Joining me now to discuss is the mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Syenkevych. Mayor Syenkevych, thank you so much for joining us. I know it's been a difficult past few days, well, listen, eight months for you and your citizens there.

The Ukraine's military says it shot down 13 kamikaze drones over the Mykolaiv region. What are you doing in order to best protect your residents?

MAYOR OLEKSANDR SYENKEVYCH, MYKOLAIV, UKRAINE: First of all, we, let's say, have a distance of 50 kilometers from Kherson, so they bombarded us from that region. And it takes rockets for about one minute to get from Kherson to Mykolaiv. So, we have a joke, when you hear an alarm, there won't be an explosion. And when you hear the explosion, there should be an alarm.

Yes, we had 14 drones hit by our anti-aircraft troops. And sometimes we hit them with just Kalashnikovs. But, anyway, five of them hit their aims and we have some destruction. Moreover, in the morning, about 9:00 A.M., we got four strikes by rockets of C-300. And, fortunately, no one has died but we have some (INAUDIBLE).

GOLODRYGA: You were a city of a little under 500,000 before the war. I'm just curious, what exposure at all does your energy infrastructure have?

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Do you have access to electricity and water there for your citizens and residents?

SYENKEVYCH: For now, we have 220,000 people out of half a million. And for sure, we need to supply them with water, electricity, heating and public transport. So, we do this, I mean, when we have problems water supply because Russians bombarded pipes from the Dnipro River from the Kherson region, and now we're taking water from other rivers but this water is salty. So you can't drink it but at least we can use it for washing, for toilets and everything.

So, we give people water through water trucks, like it was in the World War II, when people come to the trucks using their plastic bottles, refill them and go home for drinking. For sure, Russians now attacking our infrastructure, electricity infrastructure, electricity stations and also hitting boiler houses just to freeze Ukrainians. Let's call it genocide. So, anyway, our companies and service companies, municipal service companies always are ready to repair everything and to renovate our electricity, gas and heating facilities.

GOLODRYGA: You mentioned your proximity to Kherson there to the east of you. Now, that we are seeing tens of thousands of residents being re-evacuated or moved forcibly to Russia proper, I'm curious if any of them are coming to you, if you are taking any of those residents of Kherson into your city?

SYENKEVYCH: We provided them with the service in the beginning of the war. After Russians blocked the way from Kherson to Mykolaiv, the citizens of Kherson have no way to Mykolaiv. So, they have to go north or in Russia.

I don't believe those numbers about evacuated 50,000 people. I saw those images. But they use water -- I mean, ships, small ships to evacuate people from one bank of the River Dnipro, to another. So, I think it is about maybe 5,000 at most.

The main thing why they do this, why they evacuate civilians, Ukrainian civilians, which, for sure, the Ukrainian army won't harm, I mean, we won't kill Ukrainians because they're our people and they're under occupation and under occupants. And I think there is an idea. This is only just an idea that they want to hit the city by themselves and saying that these are Ukrainians who are attacking their city. So, this is the main thing we need to think and more of free journalists have to show this video (ph).

GOLODRYGA: Constantly using propaganda there on the Russian part. And, obviously, this is a sign of their weakness in their battle on the field there with Ukrainians to resort to these means.

Mayor Oleksandr Syenkevych, thank you for your time. Be well, be safe. We appreciate it.

Well, voters in Pennsylvania will soon decide two close races that will have a significant impact on the nation. And President Biden is headed there today to give Senate Candidate John Fetterman a boost. We'll speak to the former mayor of Philadelphia about these crucial races, up next.

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