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CNN International: Kremlin: "Enormous Effort" in Soledar but "Main Work still Ahead"; WH Refuses to Answer key Questions about Classified Docs; How is Biden's Document Scandal Different from Trump's; Signs of COVID Death Toll Grow in China; Facebook Owner Meta Weighs Lifting Trump Ban. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired January 12, 2023 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: But we do know that both sides have been taken very heavy casualties in this battle. It's been going on for months, but the last weeks have seen a dramatic intensification of the fighting there, Max.

MAX FOSTER, CNN HOST: OK, Ben, thank you in Kramatorsk. As we just reported, the Russian Defense Ministry has once again replaced this military commander in charge of the war in Kremlin. In Ukraine, the Chief of the Russian General Staff, Valery Gerasimov will take charge of the campaign in Ukraine.

He was a key figure in planning Russia's invasion. He replaces the current commander. We wonder what happens to him now. Clare Sebastian, I mean, it's almost musical chairs. There have been so many different people in this role.

CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, you could argue and Ukraine is arguing that if things were going that very well. There wouldn't be a shakeup in the leadership. But the interesting thing is what happens to Sergey Surovikin, who is the outgoing Head of the operation in Ukraine. He is not being sacked; he is simply becoming one of the three deputies to Gerasimov.

But you could argue that isn't that much of a demotion when the guy taking the job was your boss anyway, so that is interesting. I think it's worth looking at one line from the ministry of defense statement on this, they say the increase in the level of leadership, especially military operation is related to the amplified range of tasks. I think that's a roundabout way of talking about an expansion of the operation here and expansion of the wall.

We've seen a lot of that kind of messaging coming out of Russia recently, Putin's appearance in front of a lot of Defense Ministry officials, lots of visits to military headquarters, talking about unlimited resources for the military. We know that Ukraine is very concerned about another offensive in the coming months as soon as maybe even before the spring starts.

And I think bringing in the essentially the equivalent of the Joint Chiefs, the Head of the Joint Chiefs, as the Commander of the operation in Ukraine. He commands all of the Russian Armed Forces. This speaks to that a potential expansion of the operation.

FOSTER: So you know, there's is no let up here and the Ukrainians presumably are in the same position they were in before?

SEBASTIAN: Yes, I think this is not good news for Ukraine. I think this does bolster the argument that Russia is planning for another offensive come this spring.

I think the other interesting thing about this is what it says politically, there's been a lot of criticism of the way Russia has run this invasion from the likes of Prigozhin, who runs the Wagner mercenary group Cadet of the church and leader, the Russian blogosphere, the very influential military bloggers, and installing the head of the armed forces who himself has been a subject of criticism. It speaks to Putin, again, as you say, doubling down, signaling that he is not backing away from his own goals regardless of that criticism.

FOSTER: Clare, thank you. Now the fallout has begun over a second batch of classified documents found by U.S. President Joe Biden's legal team. Sources tell CNN these documents were discovered during searches that took place after the first batch was found in early November.

No word yet on where they were found. The White House is keeping very quiet about this whole situation. This is fueling Republican claims that Former President Donald Trump is being targeted after classified documents were also found at his Florida home. And MJ Lee is at the White House with the latest very little detail on the second batch of papers MJ.

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, and the White House is basically not commenting at all so far on the second batch of documents. But as you said, we understand that the second batch was discovered, after Biden aides were sort of went on a mission to scour different locations after the first batch of classified documents were discovered at a private office that the President had used on and off in Washington, D.C. So what we're left with right now is a list of unanswered questions about both the first and second batch of documents.

That we know about, including, of course, just the big major question, why the White House chose not to disclose the discovery of that first batch of classified documents, because we know that they were first discovered going back to November.

Obviously, the timing would have been really sensitive because we're talking about just several days before the midterm elections. We also just don't know some really basic details like who put the documents there in the first place?

Where exactly was the second batch of documents discovered and who put those there? Obviously, these are questions at the White House has really confronted over the last 48, 72 hours or so. And as evidenced by the White House press briefing yesterday when White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked a number of questions over and over again by White House reporters on all of these details.

She basically just dodged question after question, and declined to say anything new. Now politically, this has been an incredibly big story, of course here in Washington DC, with Republican lawmakers now promising to add this issue to their growing list of investigations that they want to launch related to the Biden White House.

[08:05:00]

LEE: And also just timing wise, it's worth noting that here in the U.S., we are waiting for President Biden to make an official announcement on a potential second term are all indications. And our reporting has shown so far that he is very much prepared to make that announcement and that he is preparing to seek a second term. And that announcement could come as early as sometime next month.

But the fact that this has sort of taken over the White House at least over the last few days and we don't really know how the story is going to end. Certainly is creating a lot of political headaches for this White House and this President Max.

FOSTER: Yes, absolutely. MJ Lee, thank you very much indeed for joining us from the White House. Travel recovering from Wednesday's ground stoppage at U.S. airports the cause of the FAA system failure has been traced to a single corrupt file. That's right, just one file but the investigation is continuing.

A source tells CNN after that fire was detected, authorities decided to reboot the pilots safety alert system. But it took longer than expected that led to some 10,000 delays, and 1300 cancellations. CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean joins us from Reagan National Airport outside Washington D.C. So they basically restarted the computer. Is that right?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Unplug it and plug it back in, Max. You know, the good news here is that we are over the hump of the cancellations and delays of yesterday. Today really pales in comparison, we've only seen about 600 delays nationwide here in the U.S.

It's important to note that this system also had a ripple effect internationally. Flights coming into and out of the U.S. were held on the ground because of this massive meltdown is a nationwide ground step. We have not seen that since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

And we now know what is so interesting here is that this all goes back to one damage database file according to the FAA. And we're hearing from multiple sources that this FAA computer was reset overnight on Wednesday. Ultimately, that did not work. They thought it would be during a time when air traffic was relatively low.

And that is what led to this nationwide ground stop. Here's what's interesting about the file multiple sources are also telling us that they can't trace it to any one particular person. It's unclear if one person is even behind this also unclear if any one specific action led to this crash of this NOTAM system and notice is the air mission system.

That is what pilots need the critical information, the add on information that they need. It's not already published by the FAA. This is the dynamic stuff changing all the time. They need it simply to take off. So this is so, so critical and the meltdown of that system led to this nationwide ground stop.

The good news here is that we're over the hump. The all other good news here is that the FAA and the Department of Transportation really owns this issue. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said yesterday that they're doing an internal investigation into exactly what went wrong here and trying to figure out the exact source of this computer system crash.

The other big question here is why this happened in the first place and how this possibly happened in the first place because the FAA has been faced by critics who say that they are woefully underfunded that these systems are way outdated. And so now there will likely be Congressional investigations into this Senator Ted Cruz, who is the top ranking Republican on the Senate committee overseeing airlines and aviation says this is completely unacceptable.

So we'll see as this unfolds, also, there's no permanent leader of the FAA right now. There's a nominee to lead that organization, that agency but nobody is still just yet an Acting Administrator right now a lot of things still to unfold here, Max.

FOSTER: OK, Pete Muntean, thank you very much indeed for joining us from the airport there. Now love it or hate it. Tell-all memoir by Prince Harry is a mega bestseller. The English language version of Spare, which officially went on sale on Tuesday, sold more than 1.4 million copies just in the first day.

Penguin Random House says that's the largest first day sales total for any of its nonfiction books. Spare has gone on sale in 16 languages worldwide, the number will go up. Still to come, the classified documents saga gets worse for President Biden as we've been hearing, and that Republicans are comparing it to Former President Trump's case, accusing the Justice Department of a double standard.

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[08:10:00]

FOSTER: Welcome back, how is U.S. President Joe Biden's documents scandal different from Former President Donald Trump's? After a second batch of classified documents were discovered as a growing political crisis for Mr. Biden similar in that they both appear to have mishandled classified information. There are some key differences, though, in how they were discovered? But also in the response as well here's how one House Democrats is characterizing it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): My sense is the administration has done everything right upon finding that these documents were in the wrong place. Obviously would have been better had not happened in the first place. But they've certainly dealt with it the right way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: But the GOP is wasting no time calling it a double standard.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): What's so surprising to me is that this came out before the election. Why does his department of justice treat people differently? Every time we find something that comes up before the election, dealing with Biden family, it's pushed under the rug. It's called a lie. It's called it the Russians are doing it. And now, why did they treat President Trump totally different to DOJ? Why did they rake?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Does he have a point? Is there a double standard? There's one person to ask Senior Political Analyst, John Avlon. I mean, it does smack double standards. But there are some key differences here as well, the Democrats are pointing out.

JOHN AVLON, CN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: There are some essential differences and it's important to first of all, say that the same standard should be applied to people and Presidents from both parties. That's basic, that's table stakes. But the key differences are worth focusing on because they are material, they're fundamental to understanding the context here.

So in the case of Donald Trump, you've got more than 325 documents, right over 60 top secret that he's being investigated for obstruction of justice, because the Department of Justice ultimately went to Mar- a-Lago, because there had been a resistance to handing over all the documents. In the case of President Biden, while it is absolutely inappropriate to have top secret documents in your private possession.

When these were found by his lawyers cleaning out an old office, they immediately contacted the NARA, which is the national records Association, who then contacted the Justice Department. Now it is troubling for the White House for Americans that a second tranche of documents has been found and the White House needs to be radically transparent, and more so than they have been about what's occurred. But to ignore the differences is to ignore the real issues.

FOSTER: The other issue, as you talk about the White House transparency, people says it's not there because they're not commenting on it.

AVLON: I don't think that's sufficient. I mean, you know, it is absolutely appropriate for a White House Press Secretary to say we cannot comment about something being reviewed by the Justice Department. But there is an appearance of stonewalling and appearance of defensiveness and consistent with GART basic procedures they need to be more open. And it may be that they do not know how many documents are out there. But gestures like for example, Attorney General Merrick Garland referring the product of procedural review to a Trump appointed U.S. attorney in Chicago. That's good that should calm people's concerns about a partisan self-dealing nature. It may ultimately lead to a special counsel to review these things to create parody.

[08:15:00]

AVLON: But the impulse to be defensive about this is what leads to a disaster as Richard Nixon famously found out and there's nothing like Watergate in this case. But it's sometimes it's not the crime it's the cover up and anything resembling that needs to be jettison. Radical transparency needs to be the order of the day for the White House.

FOSTER: What do you expect from Donald Trump? Do you expect him to use this to capitalize on it? Or might he just let it sit there and do the work for him? Because it does speak to a lot of his narrative, doesn't it?

AVLON: It you know, the idea that Donald Trump would let anything sit there and do the work for him, I think, would be the triumph of hope over experience. Republicans are going to bounce all over that U.S. Speaker McCarthy do the same and to embrace the degree of what about ism. But again, that can't fly a fit; it's fundamentally at odds with the facts.

Now on the surface for folks who do want to drive by the cycle, there are parallels obviously; a President who made a big deal about protecting top secret documents is found to have his own top secret documents. That's a fundamental problem that smacks of hypocrisy.

But engaging in what about ism to blur all the fundamental differences with regard to obstruction, the number of documents, and the scale the documents, that's just ignoring reality. And that's, if you buy into that spin, then the tail starts wagging the dog real quick.

FOSTER: OK, John Avlon, thank you very much indeed, as a Senior Analysis. China's crematoriums are seeing increased demand as the country battles an unprecedented wave of COVID 19 infections. That is Beijing is accused of underreporting COVID deaths. We're going to bring that story to you next.

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FOSTER: The World Health Organization is worried about a surge in Coronavirus cases during China's Lunar New Year holiday considered the world's largest annual migration of people. The WHO says China is sharing more data. It believes the number of reported COVID deaths is nowhere near the actual figure. CNN's Selina Wang went to one funeral home in Beijing where the death toll is impossible to ignore.

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SELINA WANG, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): COVID lock downs may be over in China, but for many there's misery at the end of zero COVID. The virus is overwhelming hospitals across the country the thick struggle to get help. Patients cramped into every available space, every hallway and corner of this Northern Chinese hospital.

Not everyone survives the struggle. Rose the bodies filled this funeral home storage room in Liaoning province that we don't know how many died of COVID. In Jiangsu, families in mourning close flood the gate and instance one family lined up outside right next to coffins waiting to cremate their loved ones. China has only officially reported a few dozen COVID-19 deaths since reopening.

But satellite images confirm the different reality we see on the ground. These images taken in late December and early January show crowds and long lines of cars waiting outside of funeral homes in six Chinese cities. The images from the outskirts of Beijing showed that a brand new parking lot was even constructed. We visited that funeral home; rows of cars were already there.

WANG (on camera): I'm now standing in that new parking lot of this Beijing funeral home. This entire parking lot area did not exist a month ago.

[08:20:00]

WANG (on camera): And as you can see the roads are not paved.

WANG (voice over): One van pulls in on loads of body and another follows. A man tells me he waited hours for his brother's body to be cremated but the weight is nothing he says compared to the crowds from a few weeks ago. Experts say Beijing's COVID outbreak has already peaked.

In December we filled these body bags piling up in metal crates at another Beijing crematorium during the height of Omicron spread in the city. This video CNN has obtained was filmed by a man who set his father's body with lying in this overflowing Beijing hospital morgue for days. He said his father waited hours for hospital bed space.

By the time a bed opened up. It was too late. Cities are now scrambling to set up fever clinics and increase ICU capacity. For weeks it was nearly impossible to buy cold or fever medicine. They were all sold out because of the huge demand.

WANG (on camera): Drug companies like this major pharmaceutical manufacturer in Beijing; they're going into overdrive to increase supply after there was a shortage of medicine to treat COVID 19 symptoms. I asked the Vice President if they had received any advance warning from the government that they were going to abandon zero COVID. So they could prepare to ramp up production. Well, he didn't directly answer my question, but it's clear that now they are doubling down.

WANG (voice over): The company told us they simply follow government policy. The drug shortage overflowing hospitals and crematoriums, their images of a country unprepared for the sudden end of zero COVID. So many families in mourning are questioning what their three years of sacrifice during zero COVID was really all for? Selina Wang, CNN, Beijing.

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FOSTER: First it was Twitter, Facebook and Instagram maybe next. Parent company Meta is set to decide whether to allow Former U.S. President Donald Trump back on his platforms. As CNN's Donnie O'Sullivan explains it's a decision that could have far reaching consequences.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONNIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): So Facebook has a big decision.

CRYSTAL PATTERSON, FORMER HEAD OF GLOBAL CIVIC PARTNERSHIPS, FACEBOOK: She gets to go first.

O'SULLIVAN (voice over): Facebook is about to make one of the most consequential decisions in the company's history. Should it let former President Trump back on its platforms?

MARK ZUCKERBERG, META CEO: In general, I don't think its right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy.

O'SULLIVAN (voice over): Facebook banned Trump after January 6 and said it would reassess the decision in two years. Now time is up and Facebook says the decision is imminent.

PATTERSON: I heard people say to me, like you guys will do anything for $1. You don't care and quite the opposite was true. There was a lot of deliberation. But the other thing--

O'SULLIVAN (voice over): Crystal Patterson is a Democrat. Katie Harbath is a Republican voted senior jobs at Facebook's offices in Washington, D.C., where they worked with politicians on using the platform.

PATTERSON: I think the decision to take Trump off the platform was overdue. We'd had a number of instances where he had posted things that for any other user would have been in violation of our community standards. He did the infamous posts about banning Muslims from the country when the looting starts, the shooting starts.

O'SULLIVAN (voice over): Katie agrees it was right to ban Trump after January 6.

O'SULLIVAN (on camera): Did you think in that moment, it was right to kick him off.

KATIE HARBATH, FORMER PUBLIC POLICY DIRECTOR, FACEBOOK: I thought in that moment, it was. In the lead up to that moment, I was still defending keeping him on the platform because as horrible as some of the things that he posted. I still just couldn't get myself past the point that I thought that people deserve to know what the people that are representing them have to say.

O'SULLIVAN (voice over): Well, Trump's social media ban was welcomed by many in the U.S. It was also criticized by free speech advocates and some international politicians in deciding what to do now Facebook says it is assessing the risk to public safety and risk of imminent harm in giving Trump his account back.

O'SULLIVAN (on camera): The parameters that Facebook have set in terms of figuring out if he should be allowed back on. Essentially what it is the mood, the feeling?

HARBATH: It's a judgment call; I think it's very important to recognize that both of these decisions are going to have a ton of impactful consequences. And it would be foolish to think that either way is an easy decision.

O'SULLIVAN (voice over): Whatever Facebook decides we'll set a precedent for political speech on the platform. Elon Musk has already restored Trump's Twitter account, although the Former President hasn't tweeted, yes. Katie and Crystal disagree on what Facebook should do.

PATTERSON: This is actually where this mirrors a debate we probably be having internally.

HARBATH: Looking at is there imminent violence happening, which I think is a little different than incitement to violence. It's a nuanced type of approach. And so I don't necessarily see that happening. You don't see other January 6 that unnecessarily happened.

PATTERSON: I recognize that Katie's making a distinction between what was it eminent and incitement. He is willing to use this platform to create that kind of energy and activity, and I think that means he loses his privileges to have access to it. I also think there's been no shortage of hearing from him.

It's not like because he hasn't been on Facebook or Twitter that he's had any trouble getting his message out, or had any trouble making sure people know how he feels about things.

[08:25:00]

PATTERSON: I don't think he's entitled to an account on there.

O'SULLIVAN (on camera): Tens of millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump. For those tens of millions of Americans, they're going to say, Facebook's platform of censorship.

PATTERSON: They can still talk about Donald Trump, they can still talk about the election, they can have all that dialogue.

HARBATH: I would be more inclined to let him back and then make sure they have a very clear set of criteria about what are the thresholds that would require the company to either take down content or demote it or eventually take him off the platform again for what he is saying, I don't think it should take another January 6th level events in order to do that.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: Before we go so good news for you. A new study has found that performing acts of kindness can help reduce anxiety and depression during 10 weeks of research. Psychologist at Ohio State University found that being kind to others helped participants take their minds off their symptoms and just made them feel better about themselves.

They also found that kindness led to better outcomes than some standard techniques used to treat mental health issues and get this the findings showed that kindness decreased symptoms such as pain, stress, anxiety, depression and even blood pressure. Thanks for joining me here on CNN "Newsroom". I'm Max was in London. "World Sport" with Amanda is up next.

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