Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Azerbaijan Airlines: Flight Experienced "Physical And Technical External Interference" Before Deadly Crash; CDC: Bird Flu Virus Showed Signs Of Being More Transmissible To Humans; Judge Denies Jay-Z's Efforts To Dismiss Rape Case. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired December 27, 2024 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:57]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: New this morning, the CDC says the bird flu is showing mutations in the hospitalized patient in Louisiana. What this could mean for potential human to human spread as authorities try to clamp down on the outbreak.

Plus, a Los Angeles county sheriff's deputy agrees to plead guilty and several others are reportedly fired after the beating of a trans man and the cover up so disturbing.

And a Judge slams Jay-Z's attempt to dismiss the case, alleging he raped a 13-year-old back in 2000. Details on the judge's decision ahead.

Hello, everyone. Happy holidays. I'm Pamela Brown in Washington, and you're in the CNN Newsroom.

And we begin this hour with two developing stories and new suspicions involving Russia. First, quote, we are investigating grave sabotage. That's according to authorities in Finland who have boarded and seized an oil tanker traveling from Russia.

The ship is suspected of dragging its anchor and causing the Christmas Day outage of an undersea power cable and three Internet lines connecting Finland and Estonia. And there are also growing suspicions of Russian involvement in the Christmas Day crash of a passenger plane in Central Asia.

Today, state media and Azerbaijan, where the flight originated, is reporting that the preliminary investigation finds, quote, physical and technical interference caused the disaster.

We have a lot to cover this busy Friday morning. Joining us now is CNN contributor Jill Daugherty, a former CNN Moscow bureau chief, Major Glenn Ignazio, retired Air Force special operations commander and a national security expert. And CNN political and national security analyst, David Sanger, he is also the White House national security correspondent for the New York Times and the author of "New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion and America's Struggle to Defend the West." Thank you all so much for coming on. So, Major Ignazio, I want to start with you what do you make of that cryptic description leading up to that plane crash, physical and technical interference?

MAJ. GLENN IGNAZIO (RET.), U.S. AIR FORCE SPECIAL OPS COMMANDER: Yes, very interesting. As far as the first indications, or at least reports, were bird strike and so forth. And aircraft are designed to be able to take that without damage. But when you look at the actual physical evidence of the photographs, the holes are very precise and they're not indicative of something happening in flight from an engine or an air structure problem.

So this is definitely something that is taken from outside. It does look more about AAA aircraft or a possible missile shrapnel. And the damage to the hydraulics and so forth would indicate why they had problems flying the aircraft. In addition to this, they also encountered jamming, for GPS jamming. And this was because Ukraine was actually launching some drones south of the Grozny area, about 100 miles away. So it really looks like this was an interference with AAA missiles and definitely damage outside of the aircraft, not from the aircraft.

BROWN: So, Jill, what is the significance if Russia is to blame? Are there international consequences here?

JILL DOUGHERTY, FORMER CNN MOSCOW BUREAU CHIEF: Well, I don't know that we know exactly what the consequences would be. But you have to look at the way Russia has dealt with it so far. Essentially it said we can't make any comment. We have to wait until we have more information. But it does very much remind me of 2014 when I was in Moscow and I covered the MH17 shoot down of a Malaysian plane. And that was also connected with, you know, a war.

At that point, it was kind of percolating in Ukraine and some partisans who were connected with Russia used a Buk missile, which is a Russian missile, to shoot that plane down. And the Russians never acknowledge that. In fact, to this day, as far as I know, they have not. So I'm not surprised that they're not saying much.

[11:05:03]

But there's a lot of evidence that's coming out at this point, as we just heard. So we'll have to see how they handle it. But it's not -- it would be very bad and embarrassing for the Russian military, no question.

BROWN: Right. And we're looking at pictures right now on the screen of that tragic Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. David, I mean, you know, as -- as Jill just said, Russia never accepted blame for that. Would you expect anything different if these findings point to Russia?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITCAL & NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Pam, I wouldn't. But it's worth remembering what happened after the 2014 shoot down. There was an international commission that was put together somewhat similar to what was assembled yesterday for this disaster. It took them about a year and a half, nearly two years, to come up with a conclusion.

As Jill just said, the Russians never acknowledged what the commission concluded, which was that it was shot down with that Russian made Buk. Nobody suggested it was deliberate, but certainly seemed to be happening in a -- in a war zone as this was. And did the Russians face a penalty? They got some fairly mild sanctions. And the same year the German government under Chancellor Angela Merkel signed the Nord Stream 2 agreement with Russia to build a new gas pipeline to Europe, one that was proceeding until the war started three years ago, the invasion of -- of Ukraine.

So I think it would be very easy for the Russians to conclude that the west isn't terribly serious about sanctions and doesn't have a lot left to sanction.

BROWN: Well, because they -- they think they have all the leverage, right, given that deal that you just talked about. We're in the winter months right now.

SANGER: Well, that's right. I mean, the deal itself was ultimately upended by the invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022. The Germans pulled out. But the fact of the matter is that the Russians came out of that concluding that if you just wait a few years, the United States will, you know, and the -- and its Western allies will lose interest and move on. And with the new administration coming in, whose interest in continuing to fund the Ukrainians is somewhat doubtful at this point, they probably have every reason to think that their best strategy at this point is deny everything and wait for it to blow over.

Now, the cables are a more complicated thing because that would be a deliberate act. And again, though limited reaction and -- and sanctions.

BROWN: So let's talk a little bit more about that, Major. Finland seizing the ship as part of its investigation into the cutting of undersea cables. How important are these cables and how would a country like Russia benefit from cutting them, Major?

IGNAZIO: Yes, it is rather significant because in that Baltic area, there's nine NATO countries that surround that area. And so it's really critical that the communications between the countries, both for cost commerce and also in military communications, will continue. To give you an idea how significant it is, now we may use satellites in the military and so forth. And even the fastest -- fastest satellite communication for internet, the cable is a thousand times faster and can carry more data.

So those undersea cables are really critical for all use, commercial, military and so forth. So what Russia can do by doing this is really deteriorate some of the operations and concerns of anything that could go on with a NATO country talking to another NATO country. In addition, this also hit some of the power lines that were underneath. So you're talking about impacting infrastructure, which would be one of the things that Russia would do to cause any kind of problems or intimidation. And as we saw only 30 days ago, a Russian, excuse me, a Chinese ship was accused of dragging and hitting two other internet cable lines. So this is very interesting to see this within 30 days. And these are significant impacts to the entire region as a whole.

BROWN: So to extend on that point you just made, Major, Jill, to bring you in, Baltic Sea nations are on high alert for these potential acts of sabotage following the string of outages of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines. It's going on -- it's been going on for at least two years. Is Russia suspected in all of these outages? What do you think of it?

DOUGHERTY: Well, I -- I think the significant in this, no question is that Russia wants to retaliate against the west, against NATO, because it does consider itself at war with NATO. So how do you do that without starting a nuclear war? You do it with hybrid other types of operations. And there hasn't been a lot of reporting on this, but there already is sabotage going on by Russians in Europe. And this could be just another example of that.

[11:10:12]

And they're hard to pin down. You know, the -- the first incident with the Chinese ship, well, who owns it? Well, it's not Russia. Were they just dragging the cable? Was this just -- just a mistake? And some of the same questions are coming up. Could this have been a mistake? But I think it's too significant, you know, the -- the neighborhood and the cables that were cut between two important NATO allies. So this is, I think, another example of Russia trying to get back at the west.

BROWN: David, I want to bring you in just to look big picture here and looking ahead when Donald Trump takes office again. Vladimir Putin recently said he hasn't talked to Trump in four years. Trump won't say anything about him talking to -- to Putin during the transition. He wants to keep it vague. But he has talked about wanting to end the war in Ukraine and striking a deal. How do you see this playing out once he takes office?

SANGER: Well, when we first heard President-elect Trump on this, he said he would solve the war in 24 hours. He's since said, well, it may be more complicated than that. Maybe he said, even more complicated than the Middle East. That's been pretty, I think, obvious to anybody who's been sort of deeply engaged in watching this for some time.

A few things, Pam. First, we don't know whether Vladimir Putin's really interested in negotiation. He said yesterday he was, but as the White House just said, and -- and John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council said, he's acting like somebody who is deeply interested in the negotiation. Maybe he's just waiting for Inauguration Day.

Second, is the question of if there is a -- a negotiation, are the Ukrainians front and center to it, or is this something that gets worked out between President Putin and President Trump and then President Trump goes to the Ukrainians and says, you'll take this deal if you want continued help. And the third question is what kind of security guarantee would Ukraine get? It's not a NATO member. Would other European countries, as they've suggested, come in and put troops in, peacekeepers along the line? Would the United States continue to supply arms and intelligence? We just don't know. And these are all things Putin's going to want to test.

BROWN: All right, thank you so much, David Sanger, Major Glenn Ignazio, and Jill Dougherty. We appreciate your time on this holiday week.

And still to come, a concerning new development in the bird flu outbreak. The CDC says a human infected with the virus has mutations that could widen the spread.

And a judge denies Jay-Z's attempt to reveal the identity of the Jane Doe, accusing him of rape. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:17:18]

BROWN: Well, the CDC has just released a concerning report on the first severe human case of bird flu in the U.S. Samples taken from a patient in Louisiana show mutations that could make it easier for the virus to spread from person to person. Now, right now, there is no evidence it's passed to anyone else human to human. And the CDC says risk to the public remains low. But experts warn a single mutation like this, like what we saw in Louisiana, or dual exposure to both bird flu and human flu, could potentially lead to another pandemic. Take a listen to what Dr. Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator for the first Trump administration, told me last hour.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. DEBORAH BIRX, FORMER TRUMP WH CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE COORDINATOR: Now we have human flu circulating at the same time we have the zoonotic flu circulating.

BROWN: And the zoonotic is for -- bird flu.

BIRX: Yes.

BROWN: OK.

BIRX: So we have the animal flu. Let's call it the animal flu. And now we have human flu co-circulating. And at any time someone could get both of those unknowingly and particularly in California, where all the dairy workers now are getting exposed, flu is rising in the south and into California. So we should be monitoring carefully that dual exposure because if you get both of the flus at the same time, the H5 flu, the bird flu, could get the genes from the human flu and make it infectious to humans in the same way that our current flu is.

BROWN: Given this double whammy that you laid out, do you think it's just a matter of time until there's just a full-fledged pandemic here? BIRX: Well, certainly we're setting ourselves up for that potential, which, you know, I -- I flashback to January of 2020 --

BROWN: Right.

BIRX: And I'm hearing the same words come out of the CDC.

BROWN: Like what?

BIRX: Low risk, low risk of human to human transmission. Didn't we hear that from the WHO and the CDC about COVID? So I think our way through this is to use 21st century technology. Remember, it was the private sector that gave us tests. Within weeks, went from 20,000 tests to 2 million tests. So if we got the private sector engaged in our response, they would help us get tests out to all of the dairy farms, all the poultry farms, where they could test both the chickens and the people exposed to the chickens, and then we would know how far spread this virus was.

BROWN: It sounds like from what you're laying out --

BIRX: Yes.

BROWN: -- you don't think this country has learned from the COVID pandemic.

BIRX: All right, agencies --

BROWN: Abd there's not a sense of urgency right now.

BIRX: Our agency making the same mistakes they made with COVID.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[11:20:01]

BROWN: CNN medical correspondent, Meg Tirrell, joins us now. What is your takeaway, Meg, from Dr. Birx of what she just said?

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you know, I remember reporting on COVID, of course, back in January of 2020 and issuing -- and saying those same words repeating from the CDC, the risk to the public is low. So that is sort of an ominous thing to say. But of course the risk is low until it isn't low.

I was just talking with Mike Osterholm from the University of Minnesota about a lot of these same things, and he was agreeing with Dr. Birx that, you know, the U.S.'s head has been in the sand bit, especially when you think about whether we are taking lessons from the pandemic we all just went through and applying them to this new potential threat. And he argued we have not done enough to take a look back at the lessons learned from that pandemic, just as you were talking about with Dr. Birx and applying those to what we might do to mitigate this threat and others going forward.

So he said that's a real failing on the U.S.'s part for not having done that yet because there are a lot of things we could do in terms of looking at vaccines and as Dr. Birx was laying out, looking at what we should be doing with schools. So there are many things that not just Dr. Osterholm and Dr. Birx, but many other scientists and folks working in public health think we should be doing on this now.

BROWN: Yes. And she was saying that we need more testing. She said testing would be key here to prevent another pandemic. And she said had we done that earlier with COVID it wouldn't have been as widespread. How concerning is this new bird flu mutation in Louisiana?

TIRRELL: There are concerning elements about this case in Louisiana that these mutations that have been observed in these samples from this patient. So this is the first severe case, the first person who's been hospitalized with bird flu in the U.S. and what we're seeing is that there are some mutations in that patient's case that could make the virus better able to infect human cells in the nose and throat, the upper respiratory tract.

Bird flu itself is not very good at doing that right now. And so we're not seeing person to person spread that we know about. The good news, though, is that it doesn't appear person passed this version of the virus on to any other people. And it doesn't look like they got it from the birds from whom they're suspected to have gotten the virus in the first place.

So it doesn't seem like this is circulating in the environment. So it's concerning, to use the CDC's words, but it doesn't raise the CDC's level of threat. And I was just talking with Mike Osterholm. As I mentioned, he doesn't think it raises his concern too much either.

BROWN: All right, Meg Tirrell, thank you so much.

And new this morning, a judge has denied efforts by rapper Jay-Z to dismiss a rape case against him. The judge also ruling that the accuser can remain anonymous despite efforts from the rap mogul's team to have her reveal her identity publicly. The case accuses Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, of raping a 13-year-old girl more than 20 years ago alongside Sean "Diddy" Combs. And Jay-Z has repeatedly denied all the accusations.

CNN reporter Lisa France joins us now. Also with us is CNN legal analyst Jennifer Rodgers. Thank you both for being here. Lisa, let's start with you. What did the judge say here? The judge had some strong words for his Jay-Z's attorney, right?

LISA FRANCE, CNN REPORTER: Absolutely. Judge Torres kind of scolded Jay-Z and his attorneys in the order in which the judge wrote, Carter's lawyer's relentless filing of combative motions containing inflammatory language and ad hominem attacks is inappropriate, a waste of judicial resources and a tactic unlikely to benefit his client. The court will not fast track the judicial process merely because counsel demands it.

So that did not go Jay-Z's way at all. And the judge had some pretty strong words, as you heard there, when it comes to this case. So this case will be moving forward despite Jay-Z and his team's best efforts. BROWN: So Jennifer, how big of a deal is the judge's decision here to reject the efforts by Jay-Z's team to dismiss this case?

JENNIFER RODGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, it's not that big of a deal in the sense that this is not really the time for that motion. As the judge said, you have to let the process play itself out. Usually in a civil case, you have discovery before you start the substantive motion. So what the judge is really saying here is don't get ahead of yourself. This is not the time for that motion. We need to go through the proper steps before you move to dismiss this case.

So they'll get another bite at this apple. What the judge is really saying is, you know, you're abusing the system and you better knock it off. And of course, you don't want to get the judge angry at you during the course of litigation.

BROWN: Yes. What is the significance of that? How unusual is it for a judge to essentially admonish in this case, you know, the -- the attorney for Jay-Z.

RODGERS: It's not unusual. I mean, Alex Spiro was a very aggressive lawyer. I think the judge is just kind of putting a line in the sand, saying, you know, watch yourself a little bit here. Let's not abuse the process, kind of putting that out there so that hopefully it goes smoother from here on out.

BROWN: What is the significance of the accuser also being granted anonymity against Jay-Z's wishes?

[11:25:01]

RODGERS: Well, eventually, of course, the accuser will be public. She is now an adult. And everyone has a constitutional right to confront, meaning, see in open court, witnesses against them. But there's really no good reason for her to be disclosed now. I mean, the basis for it is presumably that they want to start to try this in the press. They want her to have people speaking out against her. I don't want to say that Jay-Z and his lawyers want her to be threatened, but, you know, that's the natural consequence of what would happen if she became public now.

So when you think about the reasons for her to have her identity public now versus the good reasons to still keep it under wraps, given how far away we are from a trial where she kind of needs to be out in open court, there's no reason to grant that motion now. So I think that's why the judge so swiftly dismissed it.

BROWN: All right, so, Lisa, what more is Jay-Z's team saying here?

FRANCE: So far, we haven't received a response to what the judge has said. But in the past, Jay-Z has been very outspoken about his innocence. He has said, in -- in essence, that the math is not mathing when it comes to what the alleged victim is accusing him of. And he's pointing out the inconsistencies in her story, inconsistencies that she has acknowledged. But she also says that she stands by her story.

BROWN: Jennifer Rodgers, Lisa, thank you so much.

FRANCE: Thank you.

BROWN: And when we come back, after being accused of sexual assault, Trump's pick for Secretary of Defense has been fighting an uphill battle on Capitol Hill to win over lawmakers ahead of his hearing mid- January. We're going to speak to Pete Hegseth's attorney about that up next. You're in the CNN Newsroom.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)