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Team USA Brings Home Most Olympic Medals; Did Iran Hack Trump Campaign?; Trump Demands $100 Million From DOJ; Ukrainian Forces Move Into Russia. Aired 11:30a-12p ET
Aired August 12, 2024 - 11:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[11:34:13]
WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Happening now, along parts of Russia's border with Ukraine, evacuations are under way as Ukrainian forces begin their latest cross-border offensive, military offensive, inside Russia.
This morning, Russian authorities say they have evacuated over 11,000 people from at least one part of the border region with Ukraine. And this marks a very significant development in the more-than-two-year war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed these Ukrainian advances into Russia. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): I received several reports from Commander in Chief Syrskyi regarding the front lines and our actions to push the war onto the aggressor's territory.
I'm grateful to every unit of defense forces ensuring that. Ukraine is proving that it can indeed restore justice and ensure the necessary pressure on the aggressor.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[11:35:10]
BLITZER: CNN global affairs analyst Kimberly Dozier is back with us right now.
Kim, Ukrainian soldiers, they're now fighting inside of Russia. How significant is this?
KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, this has been a major shot in the arm for morale inside Ukraine, because you remember that, for months, it's been pretty much a stalemate, with Russia slowly gaining ground in the east of the country.
Now that the Ukrainian forces have done this daring raid into part of Russia, into the Kursk region, they have captured the headlines inside Moscow. What's not clear, though, is, how long are they going to stay? It's an estimate -- estimated, say, 5,000 to 10,000 troops in there.
That is not enough to hold that territory, but it could be enough to draw some of the top Russian troops away from the east of the country to try to push them out. That alone could give other Ukrainian troops a bit of relief, but, most of all, sends a message to the West, we're not out of this fight.
BLITZER: All right. On the face of this, Kim, it might look like a significant gain, potentially, a military gain for Ukraine. But do you think it could also come with some significant potential risks?
DOZIER: Well, certainly.
As thinly stretched as the Russian forces apparently are along their eastern flank, they're entrenched in there, and they're going to have to pull some troops out to push this incursion out of Kursk.
But that also means that Ukrainian troops are thinly spread. And so those 5,000 to 10,000 troops that we believe are inside Kursk had to come from somewhere, plus all the supplies to keep them there. The longer this goes on, it could be taking resources from other parts of the battlefield.
But, at the same time, the one-note sort of scream in the West was, you guys are losing, you're losing. And from President Zelenskyy's point of view, countries that decide something that they're spending money on is not worth the time or the cost.
They start to pull away. That's the vice president candidate J.D. Vance's point of view. And that's something that Ukraine can't afford. So this changes the channel.
BLITZER: Kim, I want to also ask you about these latest videos that we're now seeing, videos on social media showing Ukrainian soldiers ripping down Russian flags and raising their flags inside Russian territories.
What do you make of that?
DOZIER: Again, this is more about messaging. This is more about boosting morale inside the country, where Ukrainians have been hammered daily by Russian airstrikes. And, also, those strikes have hit a lot of infrastructure.
So, sometimes, the capital, Kyiv, is without power for 12 or more hours a day. Seeing Ukrainian troops pulling down Russian flags is just a boost for everyone, especially coming, as we are, into winter, when it's going to be a lot colder and a lot tougher without that power supply.
BLITZER: We will see how this escalates and how this develops. It's a very, very significant development right now. Kimberly Dozier, thank you very much for your excellent analysis.
And still ahead: We just learned Donald Trump wants the U.S. Justice Department -- get this -- to pay him $100 million over the FBI's Mar- a-Lago search.
So, what's behind this new Trump lawsuit? We will explain when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[11:43:28]
BLITZER: This just into CNN.
Former President Trump has filed a $100 million claim with the U.S. Justice Department in a bid to collect alleged damages from the FBI's Mar-a-Lago search.
CNN senior crime injustice reporter Katelyn Polantz is joining us right now.
What are you learning, Katelyn?
KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Wolf, this seems to be one of those attempts by Donald Trump to attack the Justice Department and the Biden administration while he's campaigning for the presidency to claim he was being politically persecuted, including when he was charged through a grand jury indictment in federal court in Florida for mishandling of national security records and obstruction of justice.
That case is currently dismissed, but the Justice Department is trying to revive it. And so what Donald Trump is doing right now through his lawyers is, he's filing a claim with the Justice Department about the -- how a federal employee may have wronged him.
That's the type of claim it is, where you can go to the agency and say there was some sort of malfeasance or just something that an employee did that wronged him.
The way that Trump says he is wronged by the search of Mar-a-Lago in August of 2022 is, he said that the attorney general and the FBI director shouldn't have signed off on this because it was too much of a surprise for his lawyers and that he ended up having to defend himself by spending millions of dollars on his legal case to repair his reputation and that all of this was a hindrance to his reelection campaign.
[11:45:02]
But, of course, Wolf, remember the actual backstory here. The Justice Department had tried for months to get back those documents. And it wasn't until they developed evidence that boxes of classified records were moved within Mar-a-Lago, which was the moment that they decided, well, we have got to go to the federal court and do a search and seizure of this beach resort in Florida to get those documents back into safe hands -- Wolf.
BLITZER: And those documents were among the most sensitive national security documents around, some of them having that SCI label, sensitive compartmented information, which is the most sensitive, the most secret kind of information. There were thousands of pages of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
All right, Katelyn, thank you very much for that update.
Other news we're following, Donald Trump's campaign is now blaming Iran for a hack on its headquarters over the weekend. Politico is reporting that it received anonymous e-mails with documents from inside the former president's campaign, including internal research on his V.P. nominee, Senator J.D. Vance.
Let's bring in CNN's cybersecurity reporter, Sean Lyngaas.
Sean, tell our viewers what you're learning.
SEAN LYNGAAS, CNN CYBERSECURITY REPORTER: Well, Wolf, we have kind of seen this movie before, right?
2016, the Russians hacked the DNC, the Democratic National Committee and others, and leaked documents to try to damage Hillary Clinton's campaign, according to the intelligence community. Now what we're seeing is what appears to be a hack and leak that certainly at least the Trump campaign is pointing to, to the finger at Iran on.
Now, we're still waiting information from our sources in the federal government and elsewhere to sort of corroborate some of these claims. What we do know is that Microsoft, which obviously has a lot of visibility in cyberspace and their e-mail accounts are used everywhere, they have warned -- they did not specifically say the Trump campaign in their report, but they released a report last week saying a campaign was targeted by Iranian hackers.
And we understand that that campaign was indeed the Trump campaign. Now, it gets a little murky where we try to connect the dots, right? There's this anonymous e-mail account that is e-mailing reporters, these documents, and then we have the Iranian cyber threat.
But we're going to learn a lot more in the coming days, Wolf, about what exactly went down. We do know that this is, again, a little bit of a repeat of 2020, when the Iranians, according to the U.S. intelligence community, got a lot more aggressive in cyberspace to try to influence the election.
They posed as the far right group the Proud Boys and e-mailed voters, trying to intimidate them. And that really caught some U.S. officials off guard at the time. Now we're going to see in the next few weeks how much we have learned in the four years since then about dealing with this threat and about how the media can play a role in sort of tamping down any panic, but also trying to get the facts out about what is going on behind the scenes, and that's what we're going to do, Wolf.
BLITZER: Yes.
Cybersecurity reporter Sean Lyngaas, thank you very much for that update, very significant news indeed. And still to come:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: What you got?
(CROSSTALK)
(SINGING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: CNN's best interview.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[11:52:47]
BLITZER: The Paris Olympic Games are now officially over.
And here's a look at the final medal count. Team USA dominated in overall medals with 126, and 40 of them gold. Very proud of my fellow Americans.
CNN's Coy Wire has been on the ground in Paris for us since day one. He spoke with countless athletes on their triumphs, their setbacks and, yes, even their spirit animals.
Here are some highlights. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: What would you say your spirit animal is or your spirit character, that switch that flips when you have to go out there and dominate and that thing that's allowed you to win 11 Olympic medals?
SIMONE BILES, U.S. OLYMPIC GYMNAST: OK. Yes. OK.
So I think mine would actually be a honey badger, like, honey badger in the gym, sloth outside.
WIRE: Oh.
(LAUGHTER)
WIRE: I have always wanted to be Superman. Can I get the special -- can you, like, act like you're knighting me right now? Oh, my God.
STEPHEN NEDOROSCIK, OLYMPIC ATHLETE: Tell me how blind I am.
WIRE: I can't see. I can't see. But you tell me I don't need to see.
(CROSSTALK)
NEDOROSCIK: Exactly. Feel it. WIRE: Yes, I just feel. I just feel.
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
WIRE: I'm going to take these off. I feel, like, funny things happening to me right now.
NEDOROSCIK: Superpowers, man.
WIRE: Superpowers.
Are there any sort of foods or things that you miss from home, that it's difficult to get here?
GABBY THOMAS, OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST: Oh, that's difficult to get here, I think iced coffee.
(CROSSTALK)
WIRE: Iced coffee?
THOMAS: Yes, I...
WIRE: Very interesting.
THOMAS: Yes.
WIRE: Because, producing, we have an iced coffee or a frappuccino something or other.
THOMAS: No way.
(CROSSTALK)
WIRE: And we got a little macaroon-ish type of dessert for you.
(CROSSTALK)
WIRE: And we wanted to wish you a very happy birthday at these Parisian Olympics.
SYDNEY MCLAUGHLIN-LEVRONE, OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST: Thank you.
WIRE: Today's the opening day of breaking, the breaking competition.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, yes.
WIRE: Come on. What you got?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got.
WIRE: Oh, oh, oh!
(SINGING) (LAUGHTER)
WIRE: Yay!
(SINGING)
WIRE: You're out there on the sport's biggest stage. Any sort of nervousness or anxiety creeping in?
TARA DAVIS-WOODHALL, OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST: Definitely before.
WIRE: Yes?
DAVIS-WOODHALL: But I think all of my nervousness and anxiety came from the Uber driver not dropping me off in the right spot.
WIRE: What?
DAVIS-WOODHALL: I know right. Before the competition, I wanted to go to the Olympic Village, to take the bus. And the Uber driver was going all around Paris, not to the Olympic Village.
[11:55:07]
And so I think all of my nervousness came out then.
WIRE: Well, this right here is one of the most powerful right arms on the planet. And I just want to do a little arm wrestling, ready, on mark, set -- no, never mind. Never mind. I like my arm.
(LAUGHTER)
WIRE: Cut.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: And our special thanks to CNN's Coy Wire for his truly wonderful reporting during the course of these 2024 Olympic Games. And as many of you probably know, he's a former Buffalo Bill. Go, Bills.
Thanks very much for joining us here in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Tel Aviv. I will be back later tonight 5:00 p.m. Eastern for a two-hour special edition of "THE SITUATION ROOM."
Stay with us. "INSIDE POLITICS WITH DANA BASH" starts right after a short break.
