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CNN This Morning
U.S. Coast Guard Searching for Missing Submersible Near Titanic Wreck Site; Size and Features of Missing Submersible Examined; French Police Raid Headquarters of Paris 2024 Olympic Games Organizing Committee as Part of Corruption Investigation. Aired 8-8:30a ET
Aired June 20, 2023 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[08:00:00]
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us now on the phone is Rear Admiral John Mauger. He is the first district commander for the U.S. Coast Guard. He is overseeing the search and rescue operations for all of this. Rear Admiral, thank you very much for being with us. At this moment, are you hopeful, are you optimistic that these five people will be found alive and you will be able to bring them to the surface?
REAR ADM. JOHN MAUGER, FIRST DISTRICT COMMANDER, U.S. COAST GUARD: Good morning, Poppy. Our thoughts as we continue on with this search are with the crew members and their families right now. If there is any chance, we are going to work as hard as we can to make sure that we can locate that submersible. And so we have been working through the night with a broad group of partners to bring all capabilities to bear looking on both surface and now expanding to a subsurface search in the area.
HARLOW: So you searched overnight an area the size of Connecticut. Are you saying you're expanding that to an even wider part of the ocean?
MAUGER: Poppy, thanks. We are expanding our capabilities on site. And so while a lot of the seven to date has been primarily focused on the surface of the water and our aircraft flew patterns in combination with Canadian aircraft and New York Air National Guard flew patterns roughly the size the state of Connecticut. But today we now have underwater search capability on scene. And so we are going to be using that to see if we can locate the submersible in the water.
HARLOW: What was the last time there was any contact with the submersible?
MAUGER: We understand from OceanGate Expeditions that the last time that they were in contact with the submersible was about an hour and 45 minutes into the dive on Sunday.
HARLOW: You told NBC News this morning that the company OceanGate Expeditions was actually leading the search. That was surprising to hear. Is that correct? And if it is, can you explain why?
MAUGER: Sure. So my lead planner for the Coast Guard goes by the title of the SAR mission coordinator, the Search and Rescue Mission Coordinator. And that's because we don't have all the capabilities to bear within the Coast Guard to effect a search in this area. And so we work very closely to bring in leading technical expertise as part of a unified command. And so I met with members of the unified command last night, including the U.S. Navy, the Canadian coast guard, the Canadian armed folks, and OceanGate Expeditions. And in this case, OceanGate Expeditions knows the site, they know where their submersible was operating. And so they are setting priorities for the diving for the ROV that's on site.
HARLOW: We know the identity now of four of the five passengers onboard. Can you confirm the identity of the fifth?
MAUGER: I am not confirming the identity of any of the personnel onboard at this point. Again, our thoughts are with the family members and the crew members involved here. And so we want to respect their privacy as we continue on with the search. We are focused on the search efforts and trying to locate the submersible.
HARLOW: Of course, that's understandable. If you are able, or anyone on these teams is able to locate the submersible, what is the plan to bring it to the surface?
MAUGER: All of our efforts right now are focused on the search and locating of the submersible. Within the unified command we have technical experts that are working to understand what types of casualties or what types of issues might have caused the submersible to lose contact and deviate from the dive plan. And so we are working through that.
HARLOW: Can you get oxygen into it before you would bring it to the surface?
MAUGER: Poppy, at this point we are focused on the search aspect of this, and we are bringing those technical experts to understand what kinds of capabilities may be needed and getting those capabilities to the site.
HARLOW: Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger, thank you very much. Good luck, good luck from all of us to all of you and the teams.
MAUGER: Thank you, Poppy.
VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: So what's it like being inside that vessel? A CBS report from last year gave us a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Inside the sub has about as much room as a minivan.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is not your grandfather's submersible. We have one button. That's it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It should be like an elevator. It shouldn't take a lot of skill. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We can use these off the shelf components.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I get these from Camper World. We run it with this game controller.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[08:05:06]
BLACKWELL: It seems quaint in the story in the way it was presented, but now knowing you have five people there and just maybe two days' worth of air left, it's not as laughable.
Let's go to Gabe Cohen, who was onboard this submersible in 2018. Dave, give us some context of the space, the size. You're there. Imagine you and four others. What can you tell us from being inside it?
GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Victor, to be clear, I was onboard above ground, or on the surface. Not in water. But I did several stories on OceanGate during my time reporting in Seattle. And in 2018 I did that story that you are seeing on Titan, on this submersible that's now missing. We went to OceanGate headquarters in Everett, Washington. We interviewed the crew, including CEO Stockton Rush and we sat inside that vessel.
And what struck me, some of what you saw in that CBS report, was how simple some of the technology seemed. It is this tiny vessel. It's very cramped. It's small. It can only fit five people onboard, and it's operating, as you saw, operated as you saw by a gaming controller, what essentially looks like a PlayStation controller. And yet the company was confident that this vessel could safely make this remarkable journey, that it could dive 13,000 feet into the ocean and handle 150 million pounds of pressure at the ocean floor. The company's CEO, Stockton Rush, told me that the pressure vessel, that it's a carbon fiber structure of Titan could handle that pressure no problem, that they had not cut corners when it came to costs or when it came to safety.
In fact, in all of my interviews, every OceanGate crew member, including the CEO, talked about safety and talked about how confident they were in this technology. They said they worked with NASA and worked with Boeing to design Titan. That said, we have since learned that Titan has had some communication issues in the past, that they lost communication with support crew on expeditions before. That CBS News report indicated that last year the vessel was lost for more than two-and-a-half hours, unable to get messages from the surface, which they rely on when they're out in ocean to figure out where there is going because there is no GPS onboard.
HARLOW: I am glad you brought up that fact, that it has gotten lost before. Here is that part of the CBS reporting.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is no GPS underwater. So the surface ship is supposed to guide the sub to the shipwreck by sending text messages.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Turn 30 degrees right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Probably.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But on this dive, communications somehow broke down. The sub never found the wreck.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were lost. We were lost for two-and-a-half hours.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rush says he will offer those passengers a free do over next year.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: Do you know from your reporting, Gabe, if there was any sort of backstop for a situation like that, got lost?
COHEN: Well, that's what we're trying to figure out right now. We have reached out to OceanGate trying to figure out what safety precautions were put in place, what sort of mechanisms to be able to reach support crews or first responders in the case of -- in case the vessel got lost. But at this point we really don't know what newer tools might have been put in place or what sort of emergency beacon might be onboard. We have not heard about anything like that. But again, we are trying to get that information from OceanGate, and at this point they haven't said.
BLACKWELL: If we were talking about a plane or a ship, we'd search for regulation. We'd search for inspection records. We'd search for oversight evidence. I want to put up on the screen what the company says on their website about certifications and regulation. It's pretty broad here, but they say, "By definition innovation is outside of an already accepted system. However, this does not mean that OceanGate does not meet standards where they are applied, but it means that innovation often falls outside of the existing industry paradigms." So, Gabe, you know not just the vessel, but the company. Are they subject to government oversight, to inspections, to regulation? What do you know?
COHEN: Well, we are looking into that right now. But as you mentioned, you know, the company really stressed that as far as they see it, regulation hasn't caught up with innovation, and they have said their vessels are not classed, as they put it. But we really don't know, and we are trying to dig up what sort of regulation there might be on an underwater vessel the way there would be on an airplane, something flying into space. So those are answers we are currently looking for.
HARLOW: Gape Cohen, thank you very much for your unique perspective. It really informs all your reporting on this, because you have been inside of one of these. Appreciate it.
[08:10:04]
This just into CNN, French police raiding the headquarters of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games organizing committee. Investigators tell CNN this is tied to an investigation into alleged embezzlement and corruption. Let's go to Melissa Bell live in Paris. Melissa, quite stunning allegations here. What are you learning?
MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And pretty dramatic raids, Poppy. They took place across several sites here in Paris this morning. We learned the 2022 Paris organizing committee says it is cooperating fully with investigators. Let's just say, two different investigations. One that was launched in 2017 looking at the investigating committee that's looking at allegations of embezzlement of public funds, favoritism when it comes to awarding of contracts.
The second investigation is targeting the company, the public body, Poppy, that is responsible for a lot of the construction, the infrastructure work that's going on here in the French capital even now ahead of those games. And it also is looking at allegations launched in 2022 of favoritism when it comes to the awarding of contracts and that sort of thing.
So pretty serious allegations. We don't know yet what exactly they are looking for. This happens within the framework of those investigations. These kinds of raids quite common, of course. They go in without announcing they are coming in and hoping of finding the documents that they are looking for. But certainly, with just over a year to go to the start of these games so keenly anticipated here in France, not what the organizing committee would have been hoping for. In fact, Tony Estanguet, the French Olympic Champion that is at the helm of the committee had said at the start that he really intended for these to be exemplary games for the time being. That is not off to a terribly auspicious start, Poppy.
HARLOW: It's not. Melissa Bell live for us in Paris, thank you.
BLACKWELL: As new reporting from "The Washington Post" on why the FBI held back on investigating Trump's role in the January 6th insurrection for more than a year.
HARLOW: Plus, former President Trump offering up a new reason for why he didn't hands over those classified documents.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Why not just hand them over then?
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Because I had 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 have sort of seen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES: Before I send boxes over, I have to take all of my things out. These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things, golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes, there were many things. I would say were much, much more, not that I know of, but not that I know of. But everything was declassified.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: Remarks from Donald Trump on Fox News last night in his interview trying to justify why he did not hand over those boxes of classified documents after repeated requests from investigators. Meantime, a magistrate judge has borrowed both Trump and his co- defendant Walt Nauta from disclosing information in the discovery materials given to their legal teams in the case. Our Katelyn Polantz joins us live from Washington with more. Katelyn, good morning to you. How much -- let's begin with that interview. If you're any defense lawyer in America watching right now, you're thinking, oh my gosh, why is he talking but he is?
KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR REPORTER, CRIME AND JUSTICE: Yes. So, Poppy and Victor, there's a reason why defendants are warned that anything that they can say, after their arrest, can be used against them in a court of law. We'll have to see what the Justice Department does with these sorts of comments from Donald Trump. But I don't know any defense attorney who would say that this offers a valid explanation for why Donald Trump had these boxes and didn't respond fully to the subpoena. Keeping many, many classified records in his possession after the the National Archives and the Justice Department and the Grand Jury sought them back. When he was asked about that subpoena on Fox News last night by Bret Baier, and why he wasn't handing them over right away. Here is what Trump said to that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS REPORTER: And 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)
POLANTZ: So, again, let's tick through this. He has the boxes. He's saying that he knew he had them, he's saying that. He wanted them, he wanted to see them. One of them moved and he wasn't ready to respond to the subpoena immediately, apparently by the deadline, that is all part of the allegations that are charged in this case.
And the Justice Department says is against the law, that he knowingly retained these boxes and then tried to obstruct the investigation, refusing to hand them over under the subpoena demands. And so, that all is going very likely to be part of this case. And another thing Trump says that's quite interesting, as he says that he wanted to determine what was personal versus not personal. That's all supposed to be done well before --
HARLOW: Yes.
POLANTZ: -- this period of time after he -- before he's leaving the White House.
VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: So, Katelyn, the special counsel has the documents investigation, also the January 6 investigation. And there is new reporting from the Washington Post about why the FBI waited more than a year to investigate Trump for his role in the one six capital attack. Why?
POLANTZ: Well, some of the timeline is fuzzy here. But what we know is that the Washington Post is now shedding light on some conversations that were taking place very soon after the capital attack in January of 2021. And soon after that capital attack, there apparently was this very strong interest to go hard for people at the very top. Now, the Justice Department ultimately decided to take a different approach essentially to this investigation. Not one that barred them from looking at Trump, but one that would work its way up the ladder, right?
So, start with the hundreds of writers they knew that they needed to be prosecuting, then look at possible financial crimes, support of those rioters in political circles. We know that was something that they did early. And then, as they continued working, we know now, including just a year after the riots, that the Justice Department was looking into the fake electors. People in political circles that were trying to keep Donald Trump in power. And so, there is a lot of hindsight here.
The potential that people now will say we didn't start early enough within the Justice Department looking at Donald Trump and make no mistake. Donald Trump is being investigated related to January 6, and that investigation has moved extremely fast in the way that investigations tend to move.
HARLOW: Katelyn Polantz, thank you very much for the reporting from Washington.
BLACKWELL: All right. Let's bring in now CNN Senior Political Analyst and Anchor John Avlon. And CNN Senior Legal Analyst and Former Federal Prosecutor Elie Honig. Elie, let me start with you. Often, we have seen that the argument in front of the cameras for Donald Trump is not the same argument made in the courtroom. He's not under oath with Bret Baier. How much does this jeopardize damage, potentially the defense?
[08:20:20]
ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: It's all bad news for Donald Trump. He know, he's not under oath in front of Bret Baier. But all of that is admissible in court. Absolutely, Prosecutors can play that clip. And if we look at what he said last night, it's an admission, it's an excuse wrapped up within an admission. If you're a prosecutor, you would say wonderful. Now, the following things are admitted and undisputed. He knew the documents were there. We knew that already. But here he nice and cleanly sort of admits it.
He knew what was in those documents. He went through them with his own hands. He knew they contained classified and National Defense information. All of that is potentially in play at a trial. All of that has now been admitted. The excuse also just doesn't measure up, he had two and a half years. You don't get the prerogative of just now casually going through this, especially when there's been a subpoena.
BLACKWELL: Yes.
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST AND ANCHOR: You know, good to say I'm too busy to comply with your subpoena that, you know, that doesn't fly, even for a former President.
HARLOW: I thought one of the things that was so striking in that interview that Bret Baier did, I think it was a really important interview, the fact checking in real time and all of it. Would he listed off, all of the people that Trump hired, who have turned on him, who -- he says now are terrible. He listed off all of these people who are no longer allies of the President. It was notable in the political aspect. But I also wonder, just in the legal aspect of all of this, how significant it is that all of these people around the President during his critical time have turned on him.
AVLON: I'm so glad you raised that portion of the interview because I think it's so key to sort of piercing the veil around Donald Trump. You know, he always, you know, all -- hire only the best people. And what (INAUDIBLE) then Baier then listed all the people of his Cabinet who are running against him were warning explicitly. He cannot be President. He should not be President. He cannot be trusted with such information.
HARLOW: Bill Barr, John Kelly, Mike Pompeo, goes on and on.
AVLON: On and on, on the whole list. And, you know, Bill Barr has a new op-ed in the free press, which lays out.
HARLOW: Yes.
AVLON: Particularly to Trump's supporters, why this is all biased? Why, you know, Trump's defenses are biased? And at some point, you wonder, at what point will his supporters, his really hardcore supporters who are deeply invested in their own ego in Donald Trump's lies, which I think you can objectively call them that. If the people who knew Trump best are warning that he is a threat to national security, a warning that he is not telling the truth, that they're being treated as marks and dupes and fools at what point that will sink in?
And I think that's part of just the absence of character witnesses. The people who knew Trump best saying this man is unqualified as a matter of character and security to be President.
HONIG: It's also a dynamic that you see play out at trials because the witnesses against the person typically are not strangers. They're usually people who knew or worked with or for the person. And so, we're going to see that here, when people testify in Mar-a-Lago, perhaps someday, in another case, Trump's going to say they're no good, they're liars, they have bad motives. And the response will be, well, they're here to tell the truth.
BLACKWELL: Yes. Secretary Esper was on with us yesterday making the case but admitting that it wasn't getting through to a big part of the GOP base. Let's move to the Washington Post reporting. And the reporting that DOJ didn't actively investigate January 6th for 15 months. And I think the overall narrative was they were concerned about the optics, that they didn't want to seem partisan. Because there was still the residue of the Russia investigation, of Clinton e- mails. Your assessment of what you read.
HONIG: OK. It's a failure by the Justice Department. I don't think there's any way around it. Yes, they're making up for lost time now. Yes, the pace of this investigation has picked up markedly, especially since Jack Smith took over. But we discussed that at the time for the first year and a half, DOJ was allergic, categorically allergic to looking at the real power sources. Yes, they did and had to go after the people who actually stormed the Capitol. But those are not either or propositions, you can do both. DOJ has 10,000, literally 10,000 federal prosecutors, they should have aimed yes at the people who stormed the Capitol, and they should have aim high right away.
HARLOW: And John, as Elie has pointed out, there's a real cost, not for DOJ of not getting to those witnesses first, in terms of -- and what's so interesting about the Washington Post reporting is that it says that they really, for fear of looking political, didn't go directly after former President Trump and his closest allies because of that.
AVLON: It shows that this is the opposite of a witch hunt. This has been about due process and indeed a concern about the appearance of impropriety on the part of DOJ and the FBI in particular. And I think it just it goes to show that a lot of times this has been an asymmetric fight. This has been a sort of boy scouts versus mob bosses. People who are willing to do anything and other people are trying to uphold not only the law but being allergic to the appearance of impropriety.
And finally, I think in result of the hearings, this information came to a head. And now, we'll see, I mean, the seditious conspiracy convictions that have been recorded are really significant, very hard to get legally. And they point the finger, Donald Trump. We'll see whether that additional step gets taken. But I think it just goes to show that this --
HARLOW: What additional step?
[08:25:15]
AVLON: Whether Trump is indicted for, you know -- you know, inciting January 6.
HARLOW: Yes.
AVLON: As many of the people in their defense who've been charged with seditious conspiracy saying --
HARLOW: They pointed too.
AVLON: But they did.
HARLOW: Yes.
AVLON: Absolutely.
HARLOW: Yes.
AVLON: But I just think it goes to show that this is -- this has been -- this is about the rule of law. And people inside the organizations were deeply concerned about the appearance of being political, and reluctant to take the step. But if we take the step, it'll be because the facts demanded.
HONIG: It's a great point. It's almost an anti-witch hunt.
AVLON: Yes.
HONIG: I mean, they were so reluctant scared, wherever you want to call it, that they refused to even think about Trump until a year and a half later.
BLACKWELL: 21 months until Director Wray got his first briefing on the investigation. All right, John, Elie, thank you both.
HARLOW: Well, following this really urgent search this morning, from missing submersible that was headed to the Titanic wreckage. We're going to be joined by a friend of one of the five people inside that vessel.
BLACKWELL: Plus, the cricket infestation in Nevada. Yes, it makes my skin crawl.
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[08:30:00]
