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Search & rescue Underway For Missing Titanic Sub; Ukraine: Russia Launches New Overnight Air Attacks; Judge Bars Trump And Co- Defendant From Sharing Information Given To Legal Teams In Documents Case; Judge Bars Trump and Co-Defendant from Sharing Information Given to Legal Teams; Kremlin Critic Navalny Trial for 'Extremism'; Deadly Mass Shootings Mark Holiday Weekend; New Museum Reveals CNN Anchor's Family History. Aired 12-1a ET
Aired June 20, 2023 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us here in the United States and all around the world. I'm Rosemary Church.
Just ahead on CNN NEWSROOM. A race against time. Rescuers work desperately to track down a civilian sub that went missing during a voyage to the Titanic wreckage.
High winds, hail, and tornadoes rip across the southern United States with more storms in the forecast on Tuesday.
And the U.S. and China tried to get their relationship back on track in Beijing but fall short of at least one key goal.
ANNOUNCER: Live from CNN Center, this is CNN NEWSROOM WITH ROSEMARY CHURCH.
CHURCH: Good to have you with us.
And we begin with a search and rescue mission happening right now in the North Atlantic Ocean for a missing submersible carrying five people to see the wreckage of the Titanic. The sub belongs to the commercial underwater exploration company OceanGate, which issued a statement saying it's taking every step possible to bring the five crew members back safely. The U.S. Coast Guard said it would conduct searches on the ocean surface throughout Monday evening, and that the Canadian Coast Guard would pick up Tuesday morning with searchers both on and below the surface.
The wreck of the Titanic is almost 400 nautical miles southeast of Newfoundland in Canada. It sits in two parts on the ocean floor more than two miles or almost four kilometers below the surface. A U.S. Coast Guard official briefed reporters Monday on the search efforts. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REAR ADMIRAL JOHN MAUGER, COMMANDER, U.S. COAST GUARD FIRST DISTRICT: It is a remote area. And it is a challenge to conduct a search in that remote area. But we are deploying all available assets to make sure that we can locate the craft and rescue the people on board.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: And we get more now on the search from CNN's Brian Todd.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): An urgent search and rescue operation is now underway in the North Atlantic in the area near the wreck of the Titanic to find a lost submersible with five people aboard. The U.S. Coast Guard tells CNN it's got a ship on the scene and aircraft including C-130 planes. Canadian ships and planes joining the search as well along with the Polar Prince, the vessel that transported the missing submersible to the site of the Titanic wreckage about 380 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. The Coast Guard says the vessel submerged on Sunday morning and lost contact with the crew of the Polar Prince one hour and 45 minutes into its descent.
MAUGER: We have to make sure that we're looking on both the surface using aerial and surface vessels, but then expanding into underwater search as well. Right now, our capability is limited to sonar buoys and listening for sounds. But you know we're working very hard to increase the capability.
TODD (voiceover): This rescue is a race against time. On its website Oceangate Expeditions, the company that operates the submersible on expeditions down to the Titanic says the 21-foot vessel has up to 96 hours, four days of oxygen for five people. One signal rescuers could be looking for.
BUTCH HENDRICK, PRESIDENT & FOUNDER, LIFEGUARD SYSTEMS: Does it have any of the normal pieces that a unit like this submersible should have a releasable beacon that would have gone to the surface and could have been sending out a signal.
TODD (voiceover): What could have gone wrong? CNN's weather team says the weather in the area was not overly harsh at the time the vessel submerged. But experts say below the surface, currents could have affected the submersible or with its various motors and propellers.
HENDRICK: It could be entrapped. It's very easy for it to suddenly get caught on something and it can't come back to the surface.
TODD (voiceover): The Titanic sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. More than 1500 people died. The wreck was discovered in 1985, split into two parts.
Recently, an underwater scanning project using deep sea mapping created new spectacular images of the ship. It's become a popular and expensive tourist destination. It costs $250,000 per person to take a trip to the Titanic on the Titan submersible that's now missing.
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The Titanic lies close to 12,500 feet. More than two miles below the surface, a depth that experts say complicates any rescue mission.
TODD: Because of those conditions, the experts we spoke to, say that if and when the submersible is located and if it's deep underwater, they'll probably have to send unmanned vehicles down first to try to address the situation. Rescue diver Butch Hendrick says they'll likely have to try to bring the vessel to the surface first. He says they won't be able to extract the people inside while it's underwater.
Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
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CHURCH: Late last year, OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush showed a CBS team the inside of the Titan submersible use for the company's Titanic expeditions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STOCKTON RUSH, FOUNDER & CEO, OCEANGATE: Take your shoes off, that's customary, OK? Wow.
DAVID POGUE, CORRESPONDENT, CBS: Inside the sub has about as much room as a minivan.
RUSH: So, this is not your grandfather's submersible. We only have one button. That's it. It should be like an elevator, you know. It shouldn't take a lot of skill. We run the whole thing with this game controller.
POGUE: Come on.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: And again, that was a CBS crew inside the missing submersible late last year. Do stay with CNN. We will, of course, continue to follow the rescue efforts in the North Atlantic throughout the day.
Well, storms have battered the U.S. South in some of the same places already devastated by tornadoes over the past few days. More than 30 million people across the region are under a severe weather threat Tuesday into Wednesday. And take a look at this video of a possible tornado in Moss Point, Mississippi. The storm ripped through the area leveling several homes and businesses in its path. At least one person was killed and nearly two dozen injured when a powerful twister swept through the Mississippi town of Louin, Sunday night.
The National Weather Service gave it a preliminary rating of F-three. CNN meteorologist Chad Myers has more on the dangerous weather impacting the country.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Quite a few severe weathers reports all the way from Virginia all the way down to the Gulf Coast. The most severe along the Gulf Coast itself with tornadoes reported down there. Some hitting some towns with damage down there. Also another event very, very heavy rainfall. Six to 10 inches of rain fell in a short period of time with flash flood emergencies in effect.
Now, here we go. This is what the computer thinks the rainfall is going to look like throughout the day on Tuesday, taking you all the way to Wednesday. Notice what happens Tuesday afternoon. Big storms could be rolling right through New Orleans.
This is kind of the biggest threat that I see here. Some of those storms could also be severe with heavy rainfall, wind, and even some hail. So, if it falls on the same places that already saw the heavy rainfall, there could be more flash flooding in the forecast.
And also that rainfall will be heading up the east coast up into Charlotte up the hills, up the Appalachian Chains and that was all the rainfall will be here along in east of that upslope flow of that mountain there -- area. And also some heavy rainfall across parts of Texas, and of course, New Orleans where I showed you those storms will be.
Something else that's going on to the West of there is this record- breaking heat. More than 60 places will likely break record highs with excessive heat warnings in effect. And a heat index to 122 in the afternoon in some places.
That's in the shade. See, these are the temperatures on the thermometer without the heat kind of added in and humidity added in. The temperatures are going to be hot already.
You add in the humidity and it's going to feel much warmer in places. It's going to feel like 120 degrees. It did in Corpus Christi on Monday. It felt for a time, 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
One more thing going on. Tropical storm Bret. It was named Bret at 5:00 p.m. on Monday, and it's out here in the Atlantic way out there. But it is forecast to move to the West toward the islands. And if you notice here the numbers, forecast to become a hurricane.
Not until probably Wednesday or Thursday, but this storm will likely intensify and move to some populated islands and possibly even into the Gulf of Mexico next week. We'll have to watch that. This track is still way too far out to figure out where this thing is going to go just yet.
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CHURCH: America's top diplomat is now headed to London after wrapping up his high stakes trip to Beijing. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is touting progress after two days of talks with top Chinese officials including President Xi Jinping. But key issues between the U.S. and China remain unresolved. CNN Kylie Atwood has details.
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KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): Secretary of State Antony Blinken casting U.S.-China relations as a work in progress at the end of his two-day visit to Beijing coming when tensions between the competing nations have never been greater.
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ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: It was clear coming in that the relationship was at a point of instability. And both sides recognize the need to work to stabilize it.
ATWOOD (voiceover): After about 10 hours with the country's top foreign policy officials, Blinken kept his visit by sitting down with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The Chinese leader saying the two sides had made progress. But on one major objective that Biden administration officials set out to accomplish, setting up military to military channels of communication between the superpowers, Blinken left empty-handed.
BLINKEN: China has not agreed to move forward with that. I think that's an issue that we have to keep working on.
ATWOOD (voiceover): The vital need for these channels was evident in just the last few weeks when aggressive Chinese maneuvers resulted in two military incidents between the U.S. and China in international waters and airspace of the South China Sea. But Blinken did walk away with a significant Chinese commitment, standing up a working group on fentanyl with the majority of precursor chemicals from the deadly synthetic opioids flowing into the U.S. coming from China.
BLINKEN: My hope and expectation is we will have better communications. Better engagement going forward.
ATWOOD (voiceover): The meetings marked with polite smiles. The tone, a stark contrast to the first time Blinken sat down with his Chinese counterpart in Alaska in 2021 when both sides traded barbs in front of cameras. In Beijing, Chinese officials again told Blinken that the Chinese government would not provide lethal support to Russia for the war in Ukraine.
BLINKEN: This is something that China has said in recent weeks, and has repeatedly said not only to us but to many other countries that have raised this concern.
ATWOOD (voiceover): Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang accepted Lincoln's invitation to visit the U.S. And President Biden indicated that he's gearing up to meet with Xi in the coming months.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm hoping that over the next several months, I'll be meeting with Xi again and talking about legitimate differences we have but also how those areas we can get along.
ATWOOD (voiceover): Kylie Atwood, CNN, Beijing. (END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: And still to come. Russia says it has a new battlefield tactic. Claiming it can use a tank as a bomb. We will bring you the latest on the war in Ukraine. Back with that and more in just a moment.
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CHURCH: Well, let's go back now to our top story. The search and rescue mission for a missing submersible carrying five people to see the wreckage of the Titanic. And these are live pictures overlooking St. John's Harbor where search efforts are based.
I want to get more now. We're joined by David Gallo. He is a Senior Advisor for Strategic Initiatives with RMS Titanic, Inc., the company that owns the exclusive salvage rights to the Titanic wreck site. Thank you so much for talking with us.
DAVID GALLO, My pleasure.
CHURCH: Now, this search and rescue effort is a desperate race against the clock, of course, to find the submersible and its crew before those oxygen supplies run out. So, what are your main concerns right now?
GALLO: Well, I've been in this business for about four decades, and this is the -- as intense that I've ever seen the community -- seen the community. It is a race against time. You're fighting oxygen levels.
They should have a day or two more left of oxygen. Also fighting the cold if the sub is still in the bottom because the deep ocean is just above freezing cold. So, hypothermia is an issue.
I think the biggest thing is where is it. Is it on the bottom? Is it floating? Is it midwater? And that's something that hasn't been determined yet.
Hopefully, with all the help that coming to bear, it will be found fairly quickly. But that's a dangerous thing to say because I don't know if that means a day or two days or three weeks. And we'll have to wait and see and hope for the best.
CHURCH: And of course, once the submersible is located, it then has to be rescued. How complicated will that process be given the deep waters around the wreckage of the Titanic?
GALLO: Complicated because -- and you said it, the water is very deep, two miles plus, and it's like a visit to another planet. It's not what people think it is. It's sunless forever, cold environment, high pressure.
And so yes, it's one thing is to get there. A second thing is to understand the situation about what the problem is with the sub and then go to work and trying to extricate it from that. The good news is, is that the technology to do that, and the techniques and the talent to do that is all there. And if anyone can get that done, that group, if things fall in the right place can do that.
CHURCH: Yes. And of course, as you mentioned, the hardest part right now is finding this sub. How do rescuers locate a small submersible like this in such deep and expensive waters?
GALLO: It's very different from something like Air France or Malaysian Air in that. The surface ships should have a pretty good idea where the sub was last known -- its last known position. A sub won't go very far. It might -- if it's gotten into trouble on the surface, it may drift a bit but -- on the bottom motoring, two miles an hour or something like that.
So, the search area should be small. That doesn't mean it'll be easy to find but it means that you can focus on a very tight area and bring your sonars in and cameras in and whatever you need to do into that area to try to locate the sub. So, it's not like looking for a huge area of the seafloor, it's a fairly small area.
CHURCH: And I have to ask you. Just how safe are these Titanic sub voyages? And could this particular incident change or perhaps even end these types of submarine expeditions, do you think?
GALLO: Yes. Well, this is a third year for OceanGate. And they had two successful seasons. This one, obviously, not successful to this point and we're still hoping for the best.
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It's going to change things for sure. And I think it has to change things because when this all began, it was only a few people that could go as deep as Titanic. But now, pretty much anyone that's got the resources, a million dollars or maybe less, can build a submarine and attempt to go to Titanic. And so, there needs to be some restriction on that kind of thing. Yes.
CHURCH: David Gallo, thank you so much for talking with us. Appreciate it.
GALLO: Thank you, Rosemary.
CHURCH: Russia is launching new air attacks across Ukraine targeting the capital Kyiv and cities as far west as Liv -- Lviv and East as Zaporizhzhia. Ukrainian officials say their air defenses were working overnight to destroy drones. We are hearing reports of damage in some areas, but we don't know the scale of it just yet. We will bring that to you when we get more information.
And meanwhile, Ukraine says Russia's major battlefield focus right now is in the east. The fighting is fiercest in and around Lyman, Bakhmut, and Avdiivka with Ukraine reporting dozens of combat engagements on Monday alone. Ukrainian military officials say Russia is throwing everything at them, infantry units, air units, and assault units made up of Russian convicts. But despite the pressure, Ukraine's president is painting a rosy picture.
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VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE (through translator): In some sectors, our forces are moving forward. In others, they are defending positions or resisting assaults and intensified attacks from the occupiers. We have no lost positions only liberated ones. They only have losses.
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CHURCH: And further south, battles are very hard going. One Ukraine fighter says Russians are digging in and are unleashing massive firepower from all directions, including from the ground itself. Ben Wedeman has details.
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BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Russian forces have laid dense minefields and deployed a significant number of reserves along the southern front.
WEDEMAN (voiceover): This according to the commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, underscoring just how difficult Ukraine's counteroffensive still, in its opening phases, is proving to be. Now, Monday morning, the Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister announced that Kyiv's forces had managed to retake eight settlements and 113 square kilometers or about 44 square miles of territory. But by the afternoon, it wasn't at all clear which side, if any, was in control of one of those settles -- settled -- eight settlements, the town of Piatykhatky, south of Zaporizhzhya.
Now, the Ukrainian counteroffensive is less than two weeks old, and it's widely believed Ukrainians have yet to commit the bulk of their forces to the fight. This as the Russians seem to have unveiled a new tactic cramming an old Soviet-era T-54 tank with tons of explosives and driving it unmanned toward Ukrainian lines. Now, the Russian defense ministry has put out a video showing that tank going up in a massive explosion just 300 yards from the Ukrainian lines, but it's not clear if the blast caused any casualties.
WEDEMAN: I'm Ben Wedeman, CNN, reporting from Zaporizhzhia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: Just ahead. A judge slaps new restrictions on Donald Trump in the classified documents case as the former president explains why he didn't cooperate with investigators. Back in just a moment.
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CHURCH: A U.S. magistrate is barring Donald Trump and his co-defendant from disclosing any information handed over to their attorneys in the classified documents case. Special Counsel Jack Smith asked for the ban. Trump went on Fox News Monday and offered his latest explanation for not handing over boxes of documents to government investigators.
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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have a lot of things in there. I will go through those boxes. I have to go through those boxes. I take out personal things. As far as the levels and all everything was declassified because I had the right to declassify it.
BRET BAIER, ANCHOR, FOX NEWS: Why not just hand them over them?
TRUMP: Because I had a -- boxes. I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don't want to hand that over to NARA yet. And I was very busy as you've sort of seen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: Pictures from the special counsel's indictment show boxes of materials stored in a ballroom and a bathroom at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. He has pleaded not guilty to 37 counts of illegally retaining National Defense Information and obstructing the Justice Department investigation.
Well, U.S. President Joe Biden is touting his record on fighting climate change as he makes his case for reelection. Mr. Biden visited a nature preserve in California on Monday, less than a week after four major environmental groups endorsed him. The president says he has taken the most aggressive climate action ever, while Republicans have tried to block it.
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BIDEN: When I think of climate, I think of jobs. When I think of climate, I think of innovation. When I think of jobs -- climate, I think of a turning parallel into progress. That's why I'm so optimistic about the future. I really am.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: The president also announced funding to modernize California's electrical grid and to host the first-ever White House Climate Resilience summit. And he is also appearing at several fundraisers during this three-day trip.
Well, Ron Brownstein is CNN's senior political analyst and a senior editor at The Atlantic. He joins me now from Los Angeles.
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Ron, a lot to cover here. Great to have you with us.
So let's start with this magistrate barring Donald Trump and his co- defendant from disclosing any information given to their attorneys in the classified documents case. And Trump going on FOX News to offer his latest explanation for why he didn't hand over those documents to investigators.
So what does all this signal to you?
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, first of all, after that explanation on FOX tonight, you wonder why it isn't Trump's attorneys barring him from talking about this. Because that certainly did no -- you know, did no good for their -- for their case to have him acknowledge that he did not -- seemingly acknowledge that he chose not to comply with the subpoena, because he didn't want to. And he believed he still had personal documents that he wanted to sort -- sort out.
I'm not sure, you know, that under a federal law, that you get to pick and choose how you deal with a grand jury subpoena in that way.
But certainly, you know, the magistrate, I think, has reason to be concerned that, through the discovery process, Trump's team and the sharing of information, you know, between legal teams is going to have access to information that he will try to then use politically by posting publicly.
And in the past, trying to rein in Trump in this sort of way has been extremely difficult. And we'll see whether this court, in particular, ultimately, this judge, this district court judge who was appointed by him and ruled in his favor earlier repeatedly, and was overruled in this case, is willing to truly enforce the rules and the kind of the standard that they set out today.
CHURCH: And how much is Trump benefiting politically from all of this? Or is it actually hurting him?
BROWNSTEIN: I think the answer, you know, as we talked about before, really is both. I mean, all the evidence is that this is strengthening him in the primary, and outside of the Republican coalition, it's having the effect that you would expect, where a lot of voters are very uneasy about both his specific conduct in this case and also the prospect of someone who could be convicted of a crime serving as president again.
Within the Republican coalition, we are once again seeing a rallying- around effect, not only from voters but from most party leaders; and an enormous reluctance on the part of the other candidates in the '24 race to really make any case against him, even on the grounds of electability, not to mention the underlying behavior.
It is striking that we are hearing from people who worked for Trump in senior positions, like Bill Barr, his attorney general; John Bolton, his national security adviser; Mark Esper, his defense secretary; even Mike Pompeo, to some extent, his secretary of state, saying this is unacceptable behavior.
The other candidates running against him haven't even been willing to cite that testimony, much less reach that judgment themselves, except for candidates on the periphery of the race: Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson. And perhaps not surprisingly, given their deference to Trump, he generally the indications are that his lead is expanding inside the Republican coalition as this unfolds. CHURCH: And Ron, meantime, President Biden is listing all his
achievements on fighting climate change as he battles for his reelection in what could prove to be a very close race.
Biden has stumbled, quite literally at times. How tough will his race be -- this race be for him, given the constant reminders of his age and questions about whether he's actually up for the task?
BROWNSTEIN: Yes, well, a couple points in that. First, today was, I think, a very revealing day of what you are going to see an awful lot of from Joe Biden between now in November of 2024, in that, Rosemary, he touted both funding that went to California from the bipartisan infrastructure act and hundreds of millions of dollars of funding that went to California from the Inflation Reduction Act.
That is -- that's going to -- add to that the semiconductor bill that they also passed on a bipartisan basis, and we're going to be talking a lot about the public investments that he was able to win those first two years, which in turn has generated an enormous amount of private investment in areas like semiconductors, electric vehicles, batteries, solar energy and so forth.
And that, I think, is going to be a major calling card for him. I think one of the biggest challenges he faces is, one, is that largely because of inflation, most Americans are still down on the economy. It's unclear whether the evidence of this investment boom, which is beginning to gather momentum, is going to be enough to change that.
But an even bigger problem and one that I think has frustrated and surprised many Democratic pollsters and strategists that I've talked to in the last few weeks, is the persistence of unease in the public. A clear majority of the public expressing concern about whether Biden is physically and mentally up to the task of another four years.
It's not clear that concern is going to go away. I think Democrats are relatively optimistic that, if he's running against Trump, the issue of whether or not you want Trump as president for another four years will be the central fulcrum of the race.
[00:35:14]
But if Biden is running against another one of the other Republicans who is much younger, that concern about his age, despite a pretty successful record on many aspects of his presidency, I think they do see as a surprisingly stubborn and durable concern.
CHURCH: Yes. Everyone watching this race very closely. Ron Brownstein, many thanks for your analysis. Appreciate it.
BROWNSTEIN: Thanks for having me.
CHURCH: We're going to pause to take a short break here. Back in just a moment.
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CHURCH: Welcome back, everyone.
Well, a new trial has begun for jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. This time on so-called extremism charges, which he and his supporters say are absurd and politically=motivated.
Navalny appeared in court Monday at a penal colony East of Moscow. More now from CNN's Matthew Chance.
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MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it paints a very disturbing picture of Russia today.
CHANCE (voice-over): Alexei Navalny, the prominent anti-corruption campaigner here, first poisoned and nearly killed, then arrested and sentenced to nine years in jail, is now facing new extremist charges that could see his prison term extended by up to 30 years, sparking new outrage among his supporters.
Well, the hearing was at a remote penal colony, where Navalny is being held. And neither journalist, nor his parents were allowed inside the courtroom.
The prosecution detailed nearly 4,000 pages of new allegations against the 47-year-old Kremlin critic, including that he created an extremist network and financed extremist activity.
CHANCE: In a statement, Navalny quipped, "But it was clear I am a sophisticated and persistent criminal," but he added that "it seemed impossible to find out exactly what I'm accused of."
Matthew Chance, CNN, Moscow.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: I'm Rosemary church. WORLD SPORT is up next for our international viewers. And for those of you watching in the United States and Canada, the news continues with a look at a new African- American history museum opening next week. And we'll show you the emotional reaction a CNN anchor had when he found out more about his own past.
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VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Damn. This is -- oh, damn.
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CHURCH: A holiday weekend in the U.S. turned deadly as a string of mass shootings and violence swept across the country. At least 15 people were killed, and dozens injured in as many as 21 shootings in multiple cities since Friday.
According to Gun Violence Archive, there have been more than 300 shootings so far this year.
CNN's Adrienne Broaddus has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHELLE PETERSON, SHOOTING SURVIVOR: This is the one that hurts the most. I had stitches in my hands. I already have a hole.
ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Michelle was among the 22 injured in a parking lot party in Illinois Saturday night about 21 miles West of Chicago. At least one person was killed. Bullets grazed Peterson's shoulder and forehead.
PETERSON: I was in the backseat, hiding. And they just kept going across me, but I couldn't get any lower. Do you know what I mean? I just heard it, and I felt it. At least 30 rounds went through my car, alone.
BROADDUS (voice-over): The DuPage County sheriff's office says deputies were on site to monitor the event.
PETERSON: It's just a Juneteenth party. I'm not exactly sure who threw it.
BROADDUS (voice-over): But around 12:25 a.m., they got called to respond to a nearby fight and immediately returned when they heard gunfire.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Next thing you know, shots just kept going off, and everybody ran. And it was chaos.
BROADDUS (voice-over): Investigators say multiple suspects fired multiple rounds into the parking lot crowd.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We just started hearing shooting, so we dropped down. We dropped down, and so they stopped. They just kept going.
BROADDUS (voice-over): In downtown St. Louis, a 17-year-old male was killed and at least nine others hurt. It happened at a party held in an office building.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's every parent's worst nightmare, tenfold.
BROADDUS (voice-over): Officers say multiple weapons were found at the scene, including an AR-style rifle. And they're still trying to figure out how the group got access to the building.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was planned in advance. We're still investigating who had access to it.
BROADDUS (voice-over): In central Washington state, two people are dead, and several others hurt after a mass shooting at the campgrounds near the Gorge amphitheater in Quincy, about 150 miles East of Seattle.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People were just trying to come out here to have fun.
BROADDUS (voice-over): It happened around 8:25 p.m. local time during an electronic dance music festival. The Grand County sheriff's office says the shooter shot four people in the campground, then continued firing into the crowd.
According to CNN affiliate COMO, when officers caught up to the suspect, they fired their weapons, injuring the alleged shooter, who survived.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don't know what the motives were, what the intentions were of the shooter.
grand county And on Friday night in Carson, California, eight people were injured during a shooting at a home about 17 miles South of Los Angeles.
It happened in a cul-de-sac, where it's believed around 20 to 30 people were gathered. Deputies say the victims range in age from 16 to 24.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We did get some indication there might have been a fight before the shooting. But that's all being investigated.
BROADDUS (voice-over): Adrienne Broaddus, CNN, Willowbrook, Illinois.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: Monday marked Juneteenth in the United States, a new federal holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the country.
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(MUSIC)
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CHURCH: CNN organized a freedom concert in Los Angeles to mark the historic day. Speaking at the event, Vice President Kamala Harris said the holiday represents America's ongoing fight to secure freedom for all.
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KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: America is a promise, a promise of freedom, liberty, and justice. The story of Juneteenth, as we celebrate it, is the story of our ongoing fight to realize America's promise. Not for some, but for all.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: Next week, the International African-American Museum will open in South Carolina on the cite of former U.S. slave port where more than 40 percent of the nation's enslaved people arrived from Africa to be trafficked.
CNN's Victor Blackwell visited the site and was given a glimpse into his own family history.
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BLACKWELL (voice-over): Very few moments in my career have ever brought me to this.
BLACKWELL: This is -- oh, man.
BLACKWELL (voice-over): It happened at the International African- American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, which opens this month.
Six centuries of history packed into 150,000 square feet at the historic Gadsden's Wharf.
DR. TONYA MATTHEWS, PRESIDENT AND CEO, INTERNATIONAL AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSEUM: Above 40 percent of all enslaved Africans would have come into Gadsden's Wharf. We've been referred to as the ground zero of importation of enslaved people into the United States.
BLACKWELL (voice-over): Dr. Tonya Matthews is the museum's president and CEO.
BLACKWELL: A place of solemnity? Or celebration?
MATTHEWS: Yes. I refuse to choose.
BLACKWELL (voice-over): Tribal art, and contemporary fashion, relics of protests and reports of resistance.
MATTHEWS: It's this infusion of trauma and joy constantly that we like to talk about here. You get the full story, but you're going to get all the context in it.
BLACKWELL (voice-over): What arguably is the best illustration of full context is the museum's center for family history. It's a team of researchers with access to millions of records that can trace African- American lineage, sometimes, back to a slave ship that came into this very port.
The expert genealogists here spent months tracing my lineage. And this was the day of the long-awaited reveal.
DR. SHELLEY MURPHY, GENEALOGIST: Make sure you've got a box of Kleenex by you. And sit there and enjoy.
BLACKWELL (voice-over): That's the museum's top genealogist, Dr. Shelley Murphy, on the laptop. She's joining us from the University of Virginia.
MURPHY: This is a tree, just a snapshot of your tree. And I'm following your maternal line. BLACKWELL: Wow, that's a lot to see in the tree.
BLACKWELL (voice-over): You see that box? Well that represents David Veney, my great-grandfather's great-grandfather. He lived in coastal Richmond County, Virginia, on a farm, with his wife Judy and their 18 children.
And in 1871, he filed this claim to be reimbursed for livestock and supplies, requisitioned by Union troops during the Civil War.
MURPHY: Another thing that is significant is that he owned the land that he's on. And it was 23 acres.
BLACKWELL: Where did a man in the 1870s, so soon after the end of slavery, get the money to buy 23 acres?
MURPHY: Absolutely. And the thing of it is, I would even question, he said he was freeborn.
BLACKWELL (voice-over): Well, for some answers, we have to go back more than 300 years, to my great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-grandmother Mary.
She arrived on a ship in Northumberland County, Virginia, in 1712, before America was America. Her granddaughter, my eight-times great- grandmother, Bess, was with her. That's according to this centuries- old deposition that Dr. Murphy's team uncovered.
Why a deposition? We'll learn that a little bit later.
MURPHY: And Bess, at the time, was about 13 years old. Witnesses apparently said they looked like they were Indians.
BLACKWELL (voice-over): Researchers believe that Mary and Bess were actually Mattaponi, like these people of that region of Virginia, called the Northern Neck.
MURPHY: We're not sure where they came from. But Thomas Smith of Richmond County did enslave one of Bess's children, and that was Sarah.
BLACKWELL (voice-over): And it's Sarah, my seven times great- grandmother, who changes the trajectory of her children and all her descendants who followed.
MURPHY: There was a law back in 1705 that declared that all children that are enslaved or free, their condition would be based on whatever their mother was.
BLACKWELL (voice-over): Remember, Sarah and Bess arrived free people.
MURPHY: So Sarah has a lawsuit that's filed, saying, we're free.
BLACKWELL (voice-over): This is the actual lawsuit filed by Sarah, suing for her freedom and for the freedom of her descendants. And that deposition? It was from a witness who saw Mary and Bess arrive decades earlier.
MURPHY: So in 1791, the court agreed with Sarah and her children and grandchildren and all of those relatives who were descendants of Mary and Bess are going to be free.
BLACKWELL: That my ancestors filed and sued for their freedom? It is remarkable.
MURPHY: We're not done!
BLACKWELL (voice-over): We're not done. We're not done. OK. We're not done. Let me get -- let me get a Kleenex, Doctor.
MURPHY: I told you! Have a box there.
BLACKWELL (voice-over): Not all of Sarah's family was free. Before the court's decisions, Sarah's enslavers illegally sold her daughter, Rachel, and then Rachel was sold again.
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And for the next 20 years, unaware of the court's ruling, Rachel and her children remained in bondage.
When she learned of the decision in 1807, more than a quarter century after her mother's groundbreaking lawsuit for freedom, Rachel filed this lawsuit against her enslaver, claiming that she was the daughter of a free women. And therefore, she and her children should also be free.
MURPHY: And guess what? The witnesses and things all came through. And they were awarded their freedom.
So what do you think?
BLACKWELL (voice-over): This is -- oh, man. To be an enslaved woman, suing a slave master. To do it twice in one bloodline?
MURPHY: In Virginia.
BLACKWELL (voice-over): It's remarkable.
MURPHY: Your line started out enslaved and became free to up until where you're at right now.
BLACKWELL: They became free because those women fought for it.
MURPHY: I'm going to tell you what, Victor. The women in your family is unbelievable.
BLACKWELL: It fills in a lot of gray. A lot of blank space. It was nothing there. There was an assumption. Now there are names. Relatives and places, and stories. It certainly fills in more of the story of my family's place in this country.
(END VIDEOTAPE) CHURCH: Absolutely remarkable. Many thanks to Victor Blackwell for that report.
I'm Rosemary Church. I will be back with more news right after the break.
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