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Ukraine: Hundreds Of Russia Troops Killed In Strike Near Ammo Cache; Former Pope Benedict XVI's Body Lies In State At St. Peter's Basically; Deadly Flooding Forces Evacuations In Northern California; 1/6 Committee Releases WH Call Logs From Days Leading To Attack; Holiday Travel Nightmare Winds Down After Southwest Chaos. Aired 2:30- 3p ET

Aired January 02, 2023 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The Russians are saying the Ukrainians use what are HIMARS, high mobility artillery rocket systems provided by the United States, which have been very effective in taking out Russian systems.

And the Ukrainian defense ministry just about an hour ago putting out a tweet saying, "Don't tease our HIMARS, they bite." And that's the case if that's the weapons system they used -- Bianna?

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN HOST: The West, no countries really have acknowledged that Russia controls that part of eastern Ukraine, which Russia says they have there in Donetsk, so we should note that's still viewed as Ukrainian territory.

Ben Wedeman, thank you.

Well, to Italy now where at least 65,000 people have paid homage to the late Pope Benedict as he lies in state at St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.

Benedict, who died Saturday at the age of 95, will be laid to rest this Thursday.

CNN's senior international correspondent, Fred Pleitgen, is in Vatican City.

Fred, public viewing just wrapped up for the day. Who are you hearing there from mourners, and what can you tell us about Thursday's funeral plans?

FRED PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. From mourners, a lot of people obviously coming here. You mentioned 15,000 on this day alone. We saw the steady stream of people moving past here for the better part of the day, thousands of people coming past us here.

A lot of folks from this region in Italy, and a lot of people coming in from Germany. Pope Benedict XVI was German, specifically attached to his home groin,

there to Bavaria. And obviously a lot of folks are saying this is the end of an era for the Catholic Church.

Because Pope Benedict, of course, he was pope for a little less than eight years, and he was a highly influential figure as a cardinal here in the cat van for around four decades and one of the people who shamed the dock trip of the Catholic Church immensely this that period of time.

As far as things moving forward, Pope Benedict XVI will lie in state today, and then on the day after tomorrow as well.

On Thursday, we have a funeral which is another remarkable event for the Catholic Church because you have the current pope, Pope Francis, who will be presiding over the funeral of his predecessor.

That's really an unprecedented event, of course. Of course, it's more than 600 years since a pope actually stood down from that office.

And Pope Benedict has been fairly reclusive in the last ten years or so, but still a big, larger than life figure here for the Catholic Church. It will be a very remarkable event.

And one of the things that Pope Benedict did want, he wanted the event to be small and fairly humble, but, of course, that's only possible to a certain extent with a large organization like the Catholic Church -- Bianna?

GOLODRYGA: Something incredible to see on Thursday.

Fred Pleitgen, thank you.

Prince Harry is doing a series of candid interviews as he's preparing to release his new book. Harry tells a British outlet, quote, "Would I like to get my father back? I would like to have my brother back."

He also sat down with Anderson Cooper for a "60 Minutes" interview and explained why he and his wife, Meghan Markle, have been so publicly critical of the palace in recent months.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: One of the criticisms that you've received is that, well, OK, fine, you want to move, you can. You want to step back from the institutional role.

Why be so public? You say you tried to do this privately.

PRINCE HARRY, DUKE OF SUSSEX: Every single time I tried to do it privately, there's been briefings and leaks and plantings of stories against me and my wife. The family motto is never explain, never complain but it's just a motto.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: There's a whole lot of complaining and explaining being done through leaks?

PRINCE HARRY: They will be through leaks of the they will feed or have a conversation with the correspondent, and that correspondent will literally be spoon fed information and write the story, and at the bottom of it they will say they reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment.

But the whole story is Buckingham Palace commenting. So when we're being told for the last six years we can't put a statement out to protect you but you do it for other members of the family, there becomes a point when silence is betrayal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLODRYGA: The title of Prince Harry's book is "Spare" and it comes out January 10th.

[14:34:08]

Deadly flooding has triggered evacuations and water rescues in northern California, and more bad weather could be on the way. We'll speak to an emergency official up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GOLODRYGA: Right now, more than 15 million people from the west coast of Illinois are under winter weather alert as a powerful storm pushes east.

Heavy rain drenched parts of northern California over the weekend bringing widespread flooding and power outages. At least two people have died.

The storm forced two major highways to shut down, stranding drivers. Emergency crews rescued several people who became trapped by rising waters.

CNN's Camila Bernal is live in California.

Camila, parts of Sacramento County remain under evacuation orders. How bad is it right now?

CAMILA BERNAL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Bianna, a lot of standing water still, and really a lot of tow trucks going around picking up all the cars were left behind over the working.

As you mentioned, there are still some evacuation orders, people are being told to be extremely careful, especially while you're out driving because a lot of the roads look what you see behind me.

Two people are already dead as a result of this storm. A 72-year-old was killed by a tree, another person that was found inside of their car.

In terms of rescues, dozens of them, according to Sacramento County officials, they had to use their helicopter and boats over the weekend trying to get people from their cars, some of them on top of their cars and some of them still inside of their cars.

And on Saturday, the National Weather Service even saying, look, there are too many road closures to even count. Highway 101 in south San Francisco was closed for a portion of the day.

[14:40:08]

So a lot of different effects because of the rain and because of the power outages.

Here are some of the residents in California that were affected by this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LINDA NEWTON, EL DORADO COUNTY RESIDENT: The water kept getting deeper, and deeper. I've been here about six years, and that's the worst it's ever been.

GABRIEL COKE, WATSONVILLE RESIDENT: When you see the water moving this quick and rising like this, it's a little unsettling.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When I opened one of my gates, there was so much water it was gushing in. It knocked me over, and I got stuck -- I lost my phone in the water.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERNAL: And rainfall exceeded eight inches here in California. It caused a lot of headaches, but rain is always welcome news here in this state.

It's unclear what the rain will do in terms of the drought conditions in the state, but, again, any time it rains, it is a good thing for California -- Bianna?

GOLODRYGA: And more rain is expected. Clearly rain is a good thing but not at the rate that it's been coming as of late.

Camila Bernal, thank you.

Well, California is bracing for another round of heavy rain this week as it continues to reel from this weekend's deadly storm.

Joining us now is Captain Parker Wilbourn with the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire Department.

Captain Wilbourn, thank you so much for joining us. I know you're very busy right now.

In terms of your biggest priorities, what are you most focused on today?

CAPT. PARKER WILBOURN, SACRAMENTO METROPOLITAN FIRE DEPARTMENT: So, as you know, California is very familiar with just about every natural disaster, whether it's flash floods, snowstorms, earthquakes or even drought.

The Sacramento Valley and area have experienced rapid significant flexes in water from both local rainfall and mainly the snow melt from warm rains from the Tahoe Mountains that, unfortunately, were not done yet.

So we are in a life priority so we're locking at continuing to do searches for folks who are stranded in their homes.

We have a lot of elderly who were unable to make it out and that are now surrounded by water, so we have rescue companies today going around home to home making sure that all of those folks are out and they are safe.

GOLODRYGA: Rescue workers have been out all weekend. As we head from Camila, there's two reportedly known fatalities. Is there anything that you have to update? Has that number increased?

WILBOURN: That is the number that we have so far. We are continuing to see challenges although we have been very proactive.

One of the successes that we've had is being proactive.

So we've done everything we can as far as setting up an emergency operation center before the storm even hit to running our boats and our helicopter resources up and down the high-threat areas to make sure that everybody is aware to evacuate, to get to high ground.

And we're going to continue to do that.

We're working very well with our strategic partners countywide whether it's with law enforcement, the county OES, state OES. Everybody is all-hands-on-deck.

We have a very good relationship with them, and we're working to try to provide that high level service to the community.

GOLODRYGA: We know that tens of thousands still remain without power. When do you expect that to be fully restored?

WILBOURN: The utility companies are working diligently to get power restored.

At one point, we had 50,000 customers out of service, power lines down and trees down, you name. It's just the amount of destruction that took place was fairly remarkable in certain parts of our county. The utility companies have worked very hard to get that restored. At last update it was around the 30,000 mark and people were out of power.

And, again, that could shrink as the days come.

Again, we have more weather storms coming over the course of early this week into next week.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, at least two more are expected just this week alone, so what resources do you need right now in preparation, and are you receiving them both from the state and federally?

WILBOURN: We are receiving the resources that we need. We worked very closely with our partners at the state OES. We have our emergency operation centers up and running and fully staffed with all the partners and pieces that will be in place as these incidents continue to unfold.

And we are begun to continue the rescue efforts and the objective approach that we've been doing over the course of the last few days.

One of the -- obviously, the Manish Utah we have are people that are trapped, and we're going to continue to work with all of our partners, fire, law and other resources to make sure that those folks are all taken care of.

GOLODRYGA: Captain, thank you for all the work that you're dork and I know you've got a busy couple of days ahead of you.

Thank you for your time.

MILBOURN: Thank you.

[14:44:52]

GOLODRYGA: The fare of one of the victims in the University of Idaho murders joined CNN for a live interview. You'll hear his reaction to the long-awaited arrest in this case. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GOLODRYGA: Just moments ago, the House Select Committee investigating the capitol insurrection released White House call logs that provide a more complete picture of who former President Trump spoke to in the days leading up to the capitol riot.

CNN's Sara Murray joins us now.

So, Sara, what more can you tell us about these White House phone logs just released?

SARA MURRAY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: They are interesting because they give you an idea of what Donald Trump was talking to before the riot.

One of the people on his list was the vice president, Mike Pence. Their relationship was in a rocky state, but that was one of the people the former president called.

[14:50:03]

He also called Doug Mastriano, a Pennsylvania State Senator, who pushed the election fraud.

And he called members of coming, including Senator Rand Paul and Senator Lindsey Graham.

Also email traffic with Trump sending stuff to Graham about election results.

He called House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, who we know was trying to reach Donald Trump just a day later when the capitol was under attack.

And Trump was also talking to John Eastman, an election attorney, who we now know was very involved in crafting this notion that Mike Pence could somehow intervene and block the electoral certification on January 6th.

MURRAY: Sara, we comes as the committee is releases a big probe of witness transactions. What are we learning from these.

MURRAY: A lot of these transcripts. Obviously, the primary takeaways from the report and the committee we already got. This is giving us a little bit more color, a little bit more texture about what was happening around January 6th and the run-up.

The executive assistant to Donald Trump when he was in the White House was talking about how she got a phone call from Trump when the riot was unfolding, asking her what she thought.

And she said the images I was seeing is the predominant memory I have. She was describing what she was seeing on TV to the president. He said, I don't have a memory of his response.

And the committee investigators were sort of incredulous about this. He said, the phones were ringing. A lot was happening. I don't recall.

And she said, I don't remember him expressing anything, talking about, again, the president at the time.

We also got more information about Mark Meadows. Even though he did not sit for a deposition with the January 6th committee, he did hand over thousands of text messages, thousands of pages of emails.

And in one transcript, the committee is essentially running through what they wanted to ask Mark Meadows. who was Trump's former White House chief of staff.

And they said they would have asked him about emails reflecting the effort to challenge election results, including an email from Mr. Meadows indicating that, quote, "Rudy was in charge." That was from the president.

That indicates a direct communication between Mr. Meadows and president.

This gives you insight into what Donald Trump was directing and that was putting Rudy Giuliani in charge of the post-election efforts to challenge the 2020 results.

GOLODRYGA: As this committee dissolves and we have a Republican- controlled Congress coming into place, we're learning so much new information in these final days.

What are members of the committee saying about what comes next in terms of the Justice Department investigation?

MURRAY: Yes. I mean, we know at this point there's a full sum Justice Department around January 6th and the effort to overturn the election results and overturn the peaceful transition of power.

And they were making their referrals to the Department of Justice. We're hearing again from more specific members. They do believe the former president should be charged with crimes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): If this is not a crime, I don't know what is. If a president can incite an insurrection and not be held accountable, then there's really no limit to what a president can do or can't do.

I think the Justice Department will do the right thing. I think he will be charged. And I frankly think he should be.

If he is not guilty of a crime, then I frankly fear for the future of this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY: So we know the view of these committee members now. It's up to the Department of Justice.

GOLODRYGA: We'll continue to follow it all.

Sara Murray, thank you.

MURRAY: Thanks.

GOLODRYGA: A frightening accident involving marvel actor Jeremy Renner sends him to the hospital. We'll have an update on his condition ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:58:16]

GOLODRYGA: The 2022 holiday travel season will be remembered for the thousands of canceled and delayed flights, stranded angry passengers trapped inside airports and air carriers like Southwest that failed miserably in easing passenger headaches.

CNN's Pete Muntean joins us from Reagan National Airport.

How does 2023 look so far, Pete?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, today is one of the busiest post-Christmas travel days we have seen so far. We had 42,000 flights scheduled according to the FAA.

But so far, not so smooth just yet. The FAA says there's an issue at one of its biggest aircraft traffic control centers in Miami that is causing hours' long delays for some flights going into Florida.

This is the departures board here at Reagan National Airport and the arrivals. We've seen most flights here on time, although we're seeing system of the delays building up.

Southwest has rounded its corner after last week. Southwest needs to focus on giving those refunds to passengers.

And I want you to listen now to employees who say it's so crucial that Southwest repairs that back end infrastructure that caused this meltdown in the first place, but also work on its reputation.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE SANTORO, VICE PRESIDENT, SOUTHWEST AIRLINE PILOT'S ASSOCIATION: I think initially it's going to cause some damage, of course. A lot of upset people not getting to their Christmas plans, which is one of the most important days of the year. Totally and completely understandable that they're going to be upset.

I do encourage them though to give us another shot. I think we're going to end up fixing this going forward.

[14:59:50]

You know, it does take a pretty -- a very large weather event to make this happen. And the union is definitely going to be pressing the company very hard on making sure things get fixed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MUNTEAN: This is how you get your money back from Southwest Airlines. You go to Southwest.com/travel disruption.