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CNN International: U.S. National Security Adviser Meets With Hostage Families; Netanyahu: Israel Will Not Free "Thousands Of Terrorists"; Biden Says He's Decided How To Respond To Drone Attack; House Committee Advances Mayorkas Impeachment Resolution; Trump's PACs Spend About $50 Mil On His Legal Bills In 2023; Who Is Boris Nadezhdin, Putin's Anti-War Challenger? Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired January 31, 2024 - 08:00   ET

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

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MAX FOSTER, CNN HOST: Hello, and welcome to CNN Newsroom. I'm Max Foster in London.

Just ahead, Israel's Prime Minister appears to reject a key Hamas demand. What impact will it have on ongoing efforts to reach a deal to free the hostages? The details coming up.

Plus, U.S. President Joe Biden says he has decided how to respond to a deadly attack in Jordan. We're live from the Pentagon this hour.

And this man hopes to run for Russian president against Vladimir Putin. Who is Boris Nadezhdin? And does he stand a chance?

We begin with a precarious situation unfolding around a hospital in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis. The Palestine Red Crescent Society says a security guard of the Al Amal Hospital was killed on Wednesday after the IDF fired at him. CNN cannot independently verify that claim.

The aid group said on Tuesday the Israeli tanks had entered the hospital grounds. The IDF told CNN its units did not operate inside the hospital. Meanwhile, amid diplomatic efforts to try to broker a deal, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan hosted families of some American hostages at the White House on Tuesday. It came after Sullivan met with Qatar's Prime Minister to discuss the latest negotiation efforts.

Jeremy Diamond is tracking all of that for us from Tel Aviv. Do you know where we're at in terms of hostage negotiation?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Well, these negotiations are certainly still ongoing. We understand that Hamas is reviewing that latest broad framework that was agreed to between the United States, Israel Egypt, and the Qatari government over the weekend in Paris. But for now, no updates as to whether or not they will accept those conditions. And as this -- these negotiations continue, the Israeli Prime Minister is making some bold statements about what he will and will not accept amid reports about the details of that broad framework.

The Israeli Prime Minister vowing not to release thousands, he says, of, quote, "terrorists". And he also is making clear that Israel will not end its war against Hamas unless -- until Israel achieves both of the major goals of this war. And that is, on the one hand, yes, the release of all of the hostages being held by Hamas, some 132, but also the objective of destroying Hamas, dismantling its capabilities -- excuse me -- within the Gaza Strip.

And he is reiterating his commitment to a, quote, "total victory in Gaza". And so, obviously, a big part of that we have to keep in context is about a domestic political audience, the Israeli Prime Minister, as he advances towards this potential next deal that could see as, you know, weeks-long pause in the fighting.

He's very much trying to keep his right-wing governing coalition together. And so it's important to view those remarks in that context as well, beyond the context of what Israel will or will not accept in terms of the negotiations.

But, nonetheless, it's important to put that at odds with what Hamas is saying they want and they want to see a total end to this war. And as they said that they were reviewing this proposal, they very much put it in that context.

Now, the families of some of those American hostages, about six American hostages who are still believed to be held captive by Hamas, they meant yesterday with Jake Sullivan, the National Security Adviser in the United States, as well as Brett McGurk, a top adviser to President Biden, who was in Doha as well as Cairo last week.

And so, they are certainly raising the pressure there. The White House trying to send a message that they are very much on top of these negotiations and working to secure their loved ones release. Max?

FOSTER: OK. Jeremy in Tel. Aviv, thank you so much.

And coming up later this hour, we'll hear from the mothers of Israeli hostages about what they're going through.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHELLY SHEM TOV, MOTHER OF OMER SHEM TOV: But we are doing everything. It's our mission of our life to bring my son back home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Family members fearful and frustrated, lashing out at the politicians demanding their loved ones are brought home. I will bring you more of their stories in less than 30 minutes. U.S. President Joe Biden, apparently walking a fine line as he prepares to respond to Sunday's drone attack that killed three U.S. troops. It happened near Jordan's border with Syria. U.S. officials blame Iran-backed militants, but Iran denies any involvement.

Mr. Biden for his part says he has decided on a response, but he hasn't said what it'll be or when it might happen.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Have you made a decision how you'll respond to the attack?

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Yes. I don't think we need a wider war in the Middle East. That's not what I'm looking for.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Well, Mr. Biden also spoke with family members of the fallen soldiers. He's expected at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Friday for the arrival of the fallen troops' remains.

Natasha Bertrand joins us from Pentagon. It's going to be a very poignant moment, isn't it? But also all eyes on the response and when it comes, of course, he can't give away too much, can he?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: No, they do want to retain some element of surprise, which is why they haven't been more specific about which group they even believe carried out this attack. They have said that they believe the group that launched this drone was supported by Kataib Hezbollah, which is an Iran-backed militia that is based out of Iraq.

But they have not really gone further than that. Notably, Kataib Hezbollah released a statement just yesterday saying that they intend to stop all of their attacks on U.S. forces. That has not deterred, of course, the U.S. and the Pentagon from reiterating that they do plan to respond to this attack.

Now, National Security Council Spokesperson, John Kirby, said earlier -- said just yesterday that he does believe that the U.S. response is going to be, quote, "multi-tiered. Not a single action, but multiple actions over time." Echoing something that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had said earlier in the week that we do expect this response to not necessarily be on one day against one target or even one single method, but something that is going to be potentially more sustained.

But they -- the calibration that the U.S. has to do at this point is, of course, striking these groups in a way that deters them from launching these attacks and stops them for good while also trying to avoid a regional war and going to war directly with Iran. Something that the U.S. has emphasized many times they do not want to do.

So right now we are waiting to see how President Biden is going to respond. He is planning to go to the dignified transfer of the remains of these service members here at Dover Air Force Base on Friday. And it remains to be seen whether the U.S. takes some kind of action before then or after that, Max.

FOSTER: OK. Natasha Bertrand at the Pentagon, thank you for that.

Republican lawmakers in the U.S. are moving forward. This is something that hasn't happened in the 150 years, and that's the impeachment of a cabinet secretary. Early this morning, a House committee voted along party lines to advance articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

They claim Mayorkas has committed high crimes and misdemeanors in his handling of the situation at the U.S. southern border. Democrats are calling the impeachment effort a sham.

CNN's Lauren Fox joins us live from Capitol Hill. I mean, what happens here and what sort of precedent does it set?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Democrats are saying that this sets the wrong precedent and they are arguing that Republicans have taken this too far. Meanwhile, House Republicans are now going to have to turn to trying to get the votes that they need on the floor of the House in order to pass this impeachment article.

Now, one thing that is very clear is they have the narrowest of majorities right now. That means they can only lose two Republican lawmakers and still get this through the House of Representatives. I asked Mark Green, who's the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee about this yesterday. He said that that works still continues, and he acknowledged that it is a challenge given the slim majority in the House.

You also have the dynamic that some Republicans, like Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, have already said. In fact, they reiterated it yesterday on CNN that they are on the fence about supporting this and leaning against it.

Now, if this does get out of the House of Representatives, then it would head over to the United States Senate. That, of course, is controlled by Democrats. And it's not as though Mayorkas is going to be convicted over in the United States Senate. So that really leaves this dynamic where House Republicans are on a futile mission.

But when I pressed Green about this yesterday, he said he does believe it's his duty to advance these articles of impeachment no matter what happens in the Senate. Max?

FOSTER: OK. Thank you so much indeed, Lauren Fox.

Now Donald Trump could learn the fate of his business empire at any moment. The judge presiding over Trump's New York fraud case said he hoped to reach a decision on damages by January the 31st in the case, that's today.

The New York Attorney General is seeking $370 million from Trump and other defendants and wants Trump barred from doing business in the state. Meanwhile, two sources tell CNN that political action committees that backed Trump spent approximately $50 million on his legal bills in 2023.

More on that part of the story. Let's go to CNN's Alayna Treene in Washington. And we're expecting these updates today, aren't we?

[08:10:01]

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: We are. We should see more of the real numbers come out when the filings are released through the FEC, which is expected later today. But look, Max, I mean, this is a staggering sum of money and it's really being footed by Donald Trump's Political Action Committees mainly Save America, one of his leading PACs, which means that this money is coming from donors.

Now, Save America is one of the funds that really saw a flood of donations come in after the 2020 election when Donald Trump was spreading his false claims of election fraud. So a lot of this money and the money that they'd raised had actually been in the bank before Donald Trump even launched his campaign.

But again $50 million is a huge sum of money. And there's a couple things I want to point out here. One is that, not all of that money, the roughly $50 million that was used for illegal expenses last year went just to Donald Trump. He's also has attorneys that are paying for his co-defendants and other witnesses in some of these cases.

The other point though is that -- and again, we'll see some of this later today when the filings are released with the FEC. But just doing the math here, it doesn't seem like his PAC can, you know, foot the bill for all of this.

I have a feeling that we're going to see that Donald Trump actually had to put up some of the money himself. And that's really interesting to note because I've covered Donald Trump for a long time and historically, he hates having to pay his own legal bills.

He has a history of, you know, stiffing lawyers in the past. But just given this massive amount of money that is having to go to his legal expenses, it does seem like some of this is having to come from his own coffers. And we know that in the first trial, the first E. Jean Carroll trial that he faced, he actually put up $5 million of his own money for that.

So I think this is going to be a trend that we're going to see continue, especially given that Donald Trump, you know, he has four criminal indictments he's facing. If any of those go to trial this year, that number is going to expand exponentially.

And so, this is really, you know, a remarkable thing that we're seeing with a man who is marching toward the Republican nomination, having this financial tsunami of legal bills that he's facing.

And just very quickly, Max, I just want to give you a comparison. You know, if you look at the past year as well, Nikki Haley, Donald Trump's, only remaining rival in this Republican primary, raised roughly $50 million through all of her committees last year. And that's just how much she had raised compared to what Donald Trump is spending on legal fees. So I think that gives you a picture of just really how big this number is.

FOSTER: Absolutely. Alayna in Washington, thank you so much.

Now, a closed-door court has sentenced Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan, and his wife to 14 years in prison. They were found guilty of illegally selling state gifts. A day earlier, Khan was given 10 years for leaking state secrets. Khan insists all the charges are politically motivated. His PCI party is vowing to challenge the rulings, which came just days before the next election.

A Thai court has ordered the country's most popular political party to stop campaigning, to amend the kingdom's notoriously strict royal defamation law. The court ruled that the move-forward party which won the most seats in last year's election, violated the constitution in trying to get the law amended.

The party had said that changing the law would make the constitutional monarchy stronger and stopped the law from being misused by lawmakers against their political opponents. The penalty for insulting Thai royalty is up to 15 years in jail. The ruling has dashed the hopes of the party's supporters that the law will ever be reformed.

16,000 sheep and cattle are stranded on board a ship off the coast of Western Australia due to the crisis in the Red Sea. The livestock carrier sailed for the Middle East on January the 5th. 15 days later, it sought permission to divert around the southern tip of Africa to avoid attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels, but that was rejected.

Concern is mounting over the animal's welfare due to the sweltering heat, but the Australian government remains undecided on whether to return them to Australia or re-export them.

Still to come, anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin has handed in the signatures required to run in Russia's general election. But can he really challenged Vladimir Putin? We'll discuss.

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FOSTER: Russian politician Boris Nadezhdin says he has handed in the signatures of 105 supporters passing the threshold to get onto the ballot for the presidential election. Russia's general election takes place on March the 17th. If the Election Commission accepts that he submitted the required signatures, he'll be viable.

He will be seen as a viable candidate to stand against President Vladimir Putin, who's already a registered to run for re-election. Nadezhdin is campaigning against the war in Ukraine describing Mr. Putin's decision to invade as a fatal mistake.

He's recently spoken to CNN's Clare Sebastian who joins me right now. I mean, every political opponent to the president ends up unable to campaign. How is he able to come carry on this guy?

CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this is an interesting one, right, because he, on the one hand, hasn't held back. His manifesto literally says Putin has made a fatal mistake with the war in Ukraine. Not only that, but in a country that has dramatically increased the level of repression since the start of this war. I mean, they're literally jailing pensioners for reposts on social media.

He has been allowed to get away with this. He said again, today, when a person stays in power too long, he starts to make catastrophic mistake. So there's that question. There's a question of whether the Kremlin is for some reason sanctioning this allowing him to go ahead, perhaps as a release valve for this anti-war sentiment to avoid street protests or because they want to make a show, an illusion of democracy.

But I asked him, given the comments that he's made, why he's still standing essentially. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEBASTIAN: People have been arrested and sent prison in Russia for a lot less than that. Why are you getting away with this?

BORIS NADEZHDIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't know. I don't know exactly why I am not arrested. I know Putin very well from 90s, even when he was not a president. He was a normal Russian bureaucrat, and I was normal Russian bureaucrat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SEBASTIAN: So he -- that's his selling point, right? He, he's, he's been around in Russian political circles for two decades. He had a sort of a brief run as an MP 20 years ago. He's trying to thread the needle as someone who yes, is in a opposition, yes, opposes the war, but wants his supporters to act fully within the law. He's not inciting people to go out and protest if he doesn't get put on the ballot.

But I think this will be a critical litmus test in a country that really isn't a functioning democracy as such as to what the Kremlin wants to get out of this election. Do they want some kind of mandate to continue the war? What then does that mean for the course of the war going forward? So I think that's why this candidate, not necessarily for the sake of the man himself, but why this campaign, this candidate is worth watching.

FOSTER: There is a theory that he or, you know, cynics arguing that, you know, he needs that legitimacy, Putin, after the election and he won't have it if he runs alone effectively. So he is being allowed to run.

But there is this concern, obviously, must be on the Kremlin side, that perhaps he does hit a nerve and he does really well. And they're not going to want that, are they? SEBASTIAN: Yes. I mean, I think like -- there's -- the thing to consider here is that in the past, Russian elections have been fraught with accusations of electoral fraud rigging. There are a lot of concerns this year around the fact that electronic voting has allowed that, that leaves it open to more potential violations.

Nadezhdin himself has asked his supporters not to vote electronically. So, you know, the elections are not given past precedent particularly likely to be free and fair.

[08:20:04]

But for the Kremlin, I think, even though Putin is more than likely 99 percent likely to win this, it is the optics matter. It's a legitimizing exercise and public opinion managing it is a careful balancing act. I think that's why this will be such a big test. There's now 10 days for the Central Election Commission to make their decision.

FOSTER: OK, Clare, thank you very much.

Next, enough is enough. The mothers of the Israeli soldiers -- hostages rather, I'm sorry, held in Gaza, tell CNN they will fight with whatever it takes to bring their children home.

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FOSTER: In Israel, dozens of hostage families say they are living through unbearable agony, still waiting for news of their loved ones held inside Gaza. Many have grown frustrated with the Israeli government saying it isn't doing enough to free their loved ones.

CNN Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward spoke to some exhausted mothers who say they'll not stop fighting until their children are home.

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CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In Israel's Parliament last week, anger boiling over. "You will not sit here while they die there," this man shouts. Family members of the hostages in Gaza storming into a session at the Knesset saying, "enough is enough."

Meirav Gonen was never political. Now, she's a regular here, pushing lawmakers to do whatever it takes to bring her 21-one-year-old daughter Romi, and the other 131 hostages home.

WARD: We saw these incidents recently here at the Knesset where family members were shouting at politicians.

MEIRAV LESHAM GONEN, MOTHER OF ROMI GONEN: This is the frustration. You know, people, when they are in fear and frustration, it's very difficult to be restrained. Some of us may cry more, maybe, you know, close inside and some of us just need to shout it out. And, you know, shouting is something -- this Knesset should be able to contain also, because it's too long.

WARD (voice-over): Shelly Shem Tov is fighting too, delivering a forceful rebuke to Israel's war cabinet at a press conference last month.

"Look us in the eyes. It's our children, our families," she says. "Where are you? Where are you?" Shelly's 21-year-old son Omer was working as a waiter, saving money to travel the world when he was abducted at the Supernova Music Festival.

SHELLY SHEM TOV, MOTHER OF OMER SHEM TOV: He is a sunshine. He is a boy that everybody wants to be near him. Everybody loves him. He loves to love. He love music.

[08:25:03]

WARD (voice-over): On Saturday night, she attended a rally for the hostages as she does every week. Exhausted and frustrated, but undeterred in her quest to bring Omer home.

SHEM TOV: I don't know if you are a mother.

WARD: I am.

SHEM TOV: So try to imagine, try to imagine that your son went to a festival. He only went to festival.

You can call your son now to ask him how is he. You know where your son is sleeping tonight. I don't know.

WARD: It must be agony.

SHEM TOV: We are tired. But we are doing everything. It's our mission of our life to bring my son back home. Everybody must stay, stop, stop.

WARD: And do you feel that enough is being done? Do you feel satisfied with the response?

SHEM TOV: Listen, my son is not at home every day. I'm getting into his room, and he's still not there sleeping in his bed. So if it's enough, no, it's not enough. It's not enough.

WARD (voice-over): 115 days into this nightmare, patience and time are running out.

Clarissa Ward, CNN, Jerusalem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: Thanks for joining me here on CNN Newsroom. I'm Max Foster in London. World Sport with Amanda is up next.

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