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Russia Escalates Attacks in Ukraine; Tracking China's Spy Balloons; Death Toll Grows in Turkey and Syria; FBI Searches Mike Pence's Home For Classified Documents; Interview With Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY). Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired February 10, 2023 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:03]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. KYRSTEN SINEMA (D-AZ): I won't be doing that today.

QUESTION: But you could change your mind.

(LAUGHTER)

SINEMA: Nope.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Democratic Senator John Fetterman's office says he did not suffer another stroke, but the Pennsylvania Democrats still in the hospital, that after feeling lightheaded Wednesday.

Fetterman's team says the senator is being monitored just in case for signs of a seizure, but, so far, there are none.

Appreciate your time today and all week on INSIDE POLITICS. Hope to see you on Monday. Have a nice weekend.

Abby Phillip picks up our coverage right now.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: A very good Friday to you. I'm Abby Phillip in Washington. Thank you for joining us.

An FBI search, a subpoena for former Vice President Mike Pence. Right now, the feds are searching Pence's Indiana home for any additional classified documents that may still be there. The move was expected, as Pence's team has pledged full cooperation with the investigation.

And we are also learning that a second location may be searched as well. Pence has also been hit with a subpoena in the criminal investigation of former President Trump's role in the Capitol insurrection. Pence was a key eyewitness and a key victim of the events on and around January 6, and the special counsel wants to hear all about his interactions with his former boss during that time.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz is tracking both of these stories for us. So, Katelyn, what are we learning first about this FBI search?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Abby, it's a pretty big and busy week for Mike Pence.

This FBI search is still going on in Indiana at his home. He's not there right now because Mike Pence and his wife just announced a few days ago his daughter had a baby, so they're on the West Coast with family. The FBI is at his home. And that's because the Justice Department is continuing to conduct a review after classified documents were found a few weeks ago by an attorney who was doing his own search at Pence's residence.

That comes on the heels of documents, classified documents, being found in the home of Joe Biden, in the office of Joe Biden, as well as that criminal probe into Mar-a-Lago having documents at Donald Trump's beach house in Florida also having documents.

And so this search of Pence's home in Indiana, it was somewhat expected, Abby. There -- after this attorney had found the documents for Pence,they were in touch with Justice Department. And they have tried to be very cooperative. We also learned today through our reporting that a private attorney is on site at that home.

And in the next few days, there is another expectation that his office in Washington, D.C., will also be searched as part of this classified documents review.

PHILLIP: And this mirrors what -- how the Justice Department has reacted also to the Biden case going and searching these locations again.

On a separate matter, tell us about the subpoena. What is the Department of Justice wanting from Pence by asking him, subpoenaing him to come in?

POLANTZ: Right.

Well, Abby, it really is a separate matter. It is this criminal investigation being conducted by the special counsel's office of Jack Smith into January 6. And the subpoena is asking for documents and for testimony from the former vice president.

Now, Mike Pence,if you remember back at the end of the Trump administration, he was witness to so much of what was happening in the Oval Office. He had private conversations with Donald Trump as Trump was trying to pressure him to block the outcome of the election in the Senate. He also was a victim. Trump's supporters were chanting "Hang Mike Pence" at that time.

And up until this point, it was unclear whether he would be subpoenaed. His team, we knew, had been asked for him to provide information. Some of his deputies have testified in this criminal investigation. And then Pence was out there on a book tour talking about some of his private conversations with Trump. Here's Pence speaking to Jake Tapper in November a little bit about

what the Justice Department may want to hear more from him on. Here he was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So I will never forget, on January 4, we had another meeting. He asked me to hear out his lawyers.

I had made it clear that I didn't believe I had the authority he was being told that I had to reject or return votes to the states. But we spoke amicably. And the president left for the helicopter to go to that rally in Georgia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

POLANTZ: So Pence there is alluding to some of the private conversations he had with Donald Trump.

And now the big question is, how much is this criminal investigation, Abby, going to push for what he and Trump were saying, one to one another, and that they have never heard under oath in any context from the former vice president?

PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, Pence has been so guarded in public about what he will say. The question is, will he also do that in private?

Katelyn Polantz, thank you for all of that.

And let's now bring in CNN legal analyst Carrie Cordero and CNN political analyst Laura Barron-Lopez.

[13:05:02]

Carrie, I want to start with you. This is now becoming a bit of a pattern for the FBI at this point. Is this what we can now expect going forward when they're trying to deal with these former officials, current officials, even, with classified documents where they shouldn't be?

CARRIE CORDERO, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I think, Abby, it does show a level of consistency, which is important to the FBI's credibility and important for them to do their job, which is to recover any classified information that might be located in places it's not supposed to be, and then conduct an investigation to determine any further effects of that, whether information was exposed in a way it shouldn't be, and then eventually determine whether there's any actual culpability for it, or whether these were just accidents.

So, it does seem that they are establishing a practice in these unusual circumstances where senior, very high-ranking government current or former officials have been determined to have classified information in their residences or offices where it shouldn't be.

And so the consistency is useful. It's important. And it's done in a way that is -- at least with respect to the current president and former Vice President Pence, in a way that's done in cooperation with them and in cooperation with their lawyers, not in an adversarial way.

PHILLIP: The other big question that has loomed at all of this is the other piece of the pattern here. Will the DOJ believe that it's necessary to also appoint a special counsel in the Pence case, as they did with Biden and with Trump?

CORDERO: Well, it's unclear at this point if they think that they need to do that.

With former President Trump, the trigger that Attorney General Garland said made him make the decision to appoint the special counsel was because the former president announced his president -- his candidacy for future reelection. So that was a significant factor in appointing the special counsel.

President Biden is the presumptive nominee. And so that caused them to appoint a special counsel on that, but also to avoid any conflict of interest, since this is the current administration that they had to conduct the searches of President Biden's residence. So I think it's currently unclear whether the Justice Department thinks that there is enough information about the Pence documents, something beyond just this was an accidental misplacement and it's very contained and limited.

I haven't seen something publicly yet that indicates they would feel compelled by the attorney general to appoint a special counsel.

PHILLIP: And, Carrie, turning to the other matter here, which we should continue to emphasize is separate, this is the special counsel that has been charged with looking into the investigations -- the document investigations related to Trump, but also the January 6 investigations.

They have now subpoenaed Pence. What do you think is going to happen behind closed doors here? Do you expect that Pence will invoke some kind of executive privilege to restrict his testimony to the special counsel?

CORDERO: Well, I think what's important to note about this subpoena that's issued to former Vice President Pence is that it was done after a long period of negotiation and dialogue with his legal team.

So it's not something where the Justice Department is serving the subpoena out of the blue to surprise him or anything like that. They have been in dialogue with his team. They obviously had gotten sort of as far as they could with where he was comfortable engaging in potentially a voluntary way.

And, sometimes, a subpoena can be issued because the recipient actually would prefer to be compelled. So, in this circumstance, I just want to raise that as a possibility, Abby, that this may not -- this move by the Justice Department to serve the subpoena may not be as adversarial as it might appear. It might be that, this way, the former vice president can testify, he can do so under oath, and he can do so in a way that he is, as a matter of fact, and also can say that he's following the rule of law. He is responding to a law enforcement demand for his information.

PHILLIP: That's a really good point, Carrie.

One last thing before you go, and we don't have a ton of time, but are there any tea leaves to be reading here about what stage of the investigation we could be in, considering that they have gone already to Pence to get the subpoena?

CORDERO: So, the January 6 investigation, I think, is a really extensive investigation.

I do think it marks a progression. So they start at least with his story that he has to tell, because they started with his former staff members, gained information that they could from them. And now they have moved to him. Obviously, it is significant to subpoena a former vice president.

[13:10:00]

And the January 6 investigation is an investigation of national significance. It's not like it's just any old criminal investigation. It's very consequential. And so it does, I think, mark that the investigation is making progress. But I don't think it indicates that it's nearing the end of the investigation yet.

PHILLIP: All right, thank you, Carrie Cordero

We lost Laura Barron-Lopez in there, live television.

But thank you, Carrie, for sticking with us.

CORDERO: Thanks, Abby.

PHILLIP: And now over to Turkey and Syria. The death toll from Monday's massive earthquake has now surpassed an extraordinary 22,000 lives.

Tens of thousands of people are injured, and the hope of finding more survivors is fading. But even in the midst of all of this death and destruction, there are still miracles happening every day. A teenage girl was rescued today after being buried for 107 hours under the rubble in Turkey, and the crews are racing against time to get to any others who may be trapped still alive.

In a crowd,a man fought back tears as his parents and four siblings were rescued alive after 102 hours buried under that debris.

CNN's Salma Abdelaziz joins us from Istanbul, Turkey.

Salma, the World Health Organization, they are warning of a potential secondary disaster unless more aid gets to these victims quickly. You are, and as you have been, in this distribution center, where they're working furiously. What are you seeing there?

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're at this massive hangar, Abby, that they have just turned, as you can see.

I'm going to start walking you through it into this distribution center. There are hundreds of volunteers here. They formed a human chain and they're passing down these boxes. They have received two million individual donations, and they are working furiously.

Each of these boxes is packed with the basics for those families, diapers, food, water, sanitation kits, mattresses. And then they take these boxes right down these human chains that you're seeing right here, passing them down, passing them down, and loading them straight up into these trucks here that are going to go right to that affected area.

They're going to drive straight to those front lines. We have four trucks lined up here, four different trucks being loaded up at the same time, all of these humans working as fast as they possibly can. If you can believe it, Abby, I mean, there's actually a queue outside here, so many people want to volunteer.

I know it looks so crazy. But, look, they just keep on pulling more and more pallets of goods. It does look a little bit crazy. But they're actually shouting down orders on these loudspeakers. If you want to keep falling me just to get a sense, again, of everything that is coming through, all of these are packed with everything that someone who has no shelter will need tonight.

They know that, if they keep working furiously, they could make a difference. So far, 250 of these trucks have gone out to those front lines, all of this just coming from the people of Istanbul. This is local residents working for Turks, from Turks. It's an enormous, a mammoth effort for a humanitarian crisis that is so huge.

And if you speak to these volunteers -- I'm just going to keep you going here -- if you speak to any of these volunteers here, they're going to tell you the same thing. They're going to tell you, we couldn't sit at home. We couldn't just sit there and watch these pictures of people suffering.

I'm going to keep moving. And I know, again, it's chaotic. Just keep going with me here, because this is how it works. This is how it functions here. Everybody's helping out. Everybody's pitching in. They keep forming these queues trying to pass these boxes.

And, like I was saying, you speak to these people in the high-vis jackets. They're the ones giving the orders. Sometimes, they have loudspeakers and they're giving the orders down. And if you ask any of these volunteers, they're going to tell you the same thing. They're going to say, I couldn't sit at home and just watch people suffering at home.

Some of these people have families in the affected areas. This is their way of doing something to help them many, many millions affected here. PHILLIP: The extraordinary power of human compassion on display there

with you.

Salma, thank you so much for that report.

And over to the White House now, where President Biden's feud with the GOP over Social Security and Medicare is still raging. That was the backdrop as Biden met with a bipartisan group of governors today. And a big focus were his domestic priorities like infrastructure.

Joining us now is someone who was at that meeting, New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

Governor Hochul, thank you for joining us on a busy day for you, I'm sure.

GOV. KATHY HOCHUL (D-NY): Thank you very much.

PHILLIP: So, Governor, this week, the president delivered his State of the Union address. A lot of people are saying this is also laying the groundwork for a 2024 run.

Yesterday, you were a part of a Democratic -- a group of Democratic governors saying you fully support a Biden reelection. But I wonder, what more does Biden need to do to win over some Democrats -- and we know, based on the polls, there are some -- who are still skeptical that he should be the nominee?

[13:15:01]

HOCHUL: Well, President Biden absolutely laid the foundation for a reelection run.

He will make that decision his own timeline. But he has tremendous support among the Democratic governors and I believe the people we represent. What he talked about at the State of the Union and reinforced to us as state leaders is that we have to keep focusing on ways we can create more jobs, whether it's infrastructure, whether it's the green economy, semiconductors, all the legislation that he has successfully shepherded through this Congress that is now available for us to take to the states and get in the hands of our constituents.

So, he has a great message. We support him. And also the way he is standing up to protect Social Security and Medicare, he laid down the gauntlet, and no one better get in his way to make sure that we protect the rights that our seniors deserve to have in their elder years. They have earned this. They have worked hard their whole lives.

And make -- President Biden is going to make sure no one forgets that.

PHILLIP: You brought it up, so I will ask you about this. I mean, that's been getting so much attention, the president's lines at the State of the Union highlighting what is, in fact, a Republican plan by Senator Rick Scott to sunset all federal laws like Social Security and Medicare. But here's the part I want to ask you about. Republicans are saying

that it isn't fair to claim that they're proposing that in exchange for the debt limit. I'm just wondering, for the sake of clarity, I mean, should President Biden be more clear about whether that Rick Scott plan is actually something that Republicans have put to him in negotiations on the debt?

HOCHUL: Listen, they have raised it.

This is something that they raise at their own peril. Literally, over a decade ago, I was elected as a Democratic member of Congress in the most Republican district in New York because Republicans even then, Paul Ryan, were talking about changing Medicare and making it harder for our seniors.

So there are consequences. Republicans will lose elections if they continue to tamper with something that has been a right of our seniors for decades and decades. So, the president is correct. And he also talked to us about the debt ceiling, that you should not tamper with our faith and good credit because it has way beyond -- consequences beyond our boundaries. It has a global effect.

So, Republicans should stop playing games, work with the president, continue delivering money and projects that will create good-paying jobs in this country, bring the jobs back home, to create the supply chain here. So there's so much we can do together. So they should stop playing games, stop scaring our seniors, is what they're doing, and work with the president to get the job done.

PHILLIP: I want to move on now to this issue of immigration that has really embroiled New York City.

And the mayor there, Eric Adams, has asked for more state support, more federal support to deal with the issue of migrants in New York City.

First of all, what do you need, as a governor, from President Biden to help deal with this influx of migrants?

HOCHUL: We need assistance at the border, to have processing at the borders, so people can go with already the asylum status applied for. And that is part of the plan he has put forward that people would start applying in their home countries, which will help future migrants.

But those who are already in our country, we have to get more federal assistance for their housing, for their education, for their health care. As far as the state of New York, we have actually put forth a billion dollars in my budget to continue what we have been doing, but also ramp up for more people.

But the greatest solution, in our opinion, is to allow these individuals to get work permits earlier. We have a 3 percent unemployment rate in the state of New York. All over the country, employers are desperately looking for workers. And all the jobs that President Biden and the Democrats are creating, whether it's in hospitality, health care, agriculture, working in restaurants, there is so much demand.

So we just had some very productive conversations with the top administrative aides about how we can possibly get that change done.

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIP: Did you get any commitments on that front?

(CROSSTALK)

HOCHUL: We're talking about it. And...

PHILLIP: OK.

HOCHUL: We're talking about it and working hard with them.

PHILLIP: All right.

I want to get to one last thing. Embattled freshman Congressman from your state George Santos, you actually met with the bipartisan delegation from New York when you were in Washington this week, but, reportedly, George Santos was not among them. What do you want to see Congress do to deal with him? He's under investigation. He's been accused of all sorts of things, including lying about most of his biography.

What do you want to see Congress do about that?

HOCHUL: I want him gone.

I did not invite him to my bipartisan meeting because I didn't think it'd be productive. And, also, he's not on any committees. We're talking about what members can do on their committees. So, he's a huge distraction for our state. And that's not just from Democrats. That's from Republicans who -- in our meetings with the governors and also what I did with my own delegation who want us to roll up our sleeves, work across the aisle and start producing results.

[13:20:01]

And someone like George Santos is not someone who can do that work right now. And, therefore, he should just move on.

PHILLIP: All right, Governor Kathy Hochul, thank you for squeezing us in between all your meetings on this very busy day. Have a great rest of your day.

HOCHUL: All right. Thank you.

PHILLIP: And CNN is learning exclusive new details on the China spy balloon investigation. It turns out that the U.S. developed a method to track these balloons last year. We will have all the details on that ahead.

Plus, a jaw-dropping amount of money Adidas says it could lose from its nasty breakup with the man formerly known as Kanye West. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIP: New today, CNN has learned exclusive new details about the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down by U.S. fighter jets.

Sources tell CNN that the U.S. developed a brand-new tracking method last year to monitor China's fleet of spy balloons.

[13:25:00]

CNN's national security reporter, Natasha Bertrand, is joining us now with these details.

So, Natasha, this is actually answering a burning question that I have had, which is, how soon did they realize that they could track these? And you have some answers in your new reporting.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, Abby.

So, what we're learning is that there was a Chinese surveillance balloon that crossed over into the United States early on in the Biden administration. And when that happened, the U.S. was able to detect some very particular signals that were emanating from that balloon. And when they did that, they said, hmm, I wonder if these signals have popped up anywhere before.

And so, when they did that, when they put those signals kind of through the U.S. intelligence community's holdings and crosschecked it with other data, they were able to detect those signals, and therefore those spy balloons, transiting over the U.S. in other instances, including at least three times during the Trump administration.

Now, this method is very important, because, without it, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for the United States to keep track of these balloons, because they can fly extremely high, they are slow- moving, and they're just generally not what the U.S. radar detection system is designed to detect.

And so this method that was developed by the U.S. intel community just last year and used for the first time just last year has also allowed the U.S. to track these balloons in real time as they transit the globe, because, as we have learned, the U.S. has also managed to see a number of these balloons crossing over five different continents, as many as 40 of these balloons across five different continents.

Well, tracking them would be a whole lot harder, if not impossible, if they did not have this very specific method that they developed only in the last year, Abby.

PHILLIP: Really fascinating reporting, Natasha. Thank you for that.

And turning now to the war in Ukraine, Russia is escalating attacks with missile strikes hammering much of that country. Several regions of the country have been left without power today. But Russia's launch of an overpowering spring offensive seems to have not materialized, at least not yet anyway. Joining us now is retired U.S. Army Major Mike Lyons.

Major Lyons, thanks for being here.

So it doesn't appear right at this moment that Russia has begun this spring offensive. Do you think that it is still coming?

MAJ. MIKE LYONS (RET.), U.S. ARMY: Hi, Abby.

I do. What the Russians are doing right now is fighting what's called a covering force battle. And what they're doing is sending out small units well ahead of the main body of forces they have. We know there's about 60,000 troops, three divisions that they have in reserve there in the eastern part of Ukraine.

And they're sending out these small units to probe and find weaknesses in the Ukraine military and force the Ukraine military to use resources against them. So I think this is all part of a grander scheme. There's no question Russia has the initiative right now in that region. And this is a part of an offense that's likely started, but what were, again, covering force battles is what the military refers to it, designed to show where the enemy is weak.

PHILLIP: And Ukraine's military in 2022, in the last year, seemed to have a lot of momentum. They were performing, I think, perhaps better than the Russians expected.

But then, six weeks later, there are new questions about whether Russia has the momentum now. What do you think is playing off -- playing out on the ground?

LYONS: I think what's happened is, Russia has started to learn. And that's got to be a sign of ominous warning for Ukraine.

If Russia is learning to do difficult tactical missions, for example, river crossings -- we saw six months ago, the Russians had a real problem crossing rivers tactically and survivability of their units as they were going over. Now we're seeing them do it better.

For Russia to go on the offensive, they're going to have to perform these more difficult tactical missions. And we're seeing indications that they're learning from them. And I think, again, that's a real warning for the Ukrainian military if that is the case.

Ukraine will have to do the same things itself if it wants to go on the offensive. That Dnipro River really separates the two forces right now. And that's a very difficult tactical mission. So, on both sides, Russia seems to have the advantage, both in the initiative and then in the learning process.

PHILLIP: Tell me a little bit about the timing here. How critical is the timing in terms of how much time Ukraine has to train up on some of the new supplies that they're getting from the Europeans?

And do they have that time, given that the Russians seem to be preparing for an offensive? LYONS: I think it's going to be a very difficult mission for them to train up. Likely, they're in simulators right now, I'm sure, training in Germany, Grafenwoehr and other places. We brought some back to the United States for the Patriot missiles.

But until you get on the battlefield and actually get in the weapons systems, it's difficult. The tanks are still not there yet. We're seeing pictures of them on railheads, for example, in Poland. And -- but time is not on the side of Ukraine at this point. And the Russians are going to try to keep that initiative, go on the offensive, and make sure that those tanks don't get there.

What we haven't seen, though, is the Russians try to interdict some of those supply lines.