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Zelenskyy to Meet One-on-One with Biden at NATO Summit; 70M+ Under Heat Dome in Southwest, Central U.S. & Florida; Streets Covered in Mud as Cleanup Efforts Begin in Montpelier; FBI Director Wray to Be Grilled by House Judiciary. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired July 12, 2023 - 06:00   ET

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

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN ANCHOR/BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: "The Bear" has a 99 percent critics' rating and a 92 percent audience rating. Season two is streaming right now.

[06:00:07]

And here is the No. 3 spot.

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IDRIS ELBA, ACTOR: There are 200 people on this flight. If they try something, and then this plane goes down, I don't get home to my family.

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SOLOMON: And that is "Hijack," starring Idris Elba. I've only seen "Hijack," but I can tell you, it is very, very good.

Thanks for joining us. I'm Rahel Solomon, in this morning for Christine Romans. CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR/CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, everyone, from Washington, D.C. Poppy is off this week. Pamela Brown back with me on this fine Wednesday. Let's get started with "Five Things to Know" for July 12, 2023.

I'm going to start off with President Biden and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy set to make a major announcement about new efforts to bolster Ukraine's long-term military prospects. Later this morning, the announcement coming as the two meet at the NATO summit in Vilnius. Despite the agreement, however, NATO has declined to offer a clear time line for Ukraine to join the alliance.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: And severe weather from coast to coast. Parts of New England are still suffering from devastating floods, while more than 50 million Americans, from California to Texas to Florida, will face another round of extreme heat.

MATTINGLY: And happening in just a couple of hours, FBI Director Christopher Wray set to testify in what's expected to be, almost certain to be, a contentious hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. Wray will face questions from Republicans who claim the FBI has become politicized.

BROWN: And new concerns after North Korea's latest missile test. The missile flew for more than an hour. A Japanese official warning North Korea now has the technology to strike this country with a nuclear weapon.

MATTINGLY: And will Hollywood actors join writers on the picket line? The actors' union, SAG-AFTRA, and studios have until midnight tonight, Pacific Time, to reach a new deal, or else a strike will go into effect.

CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.

Good morning, everybody, and welcome. Pamela, thanks for picking a very heavy news week.

BROWN: I was going to say, I really lucked out on this week.

MATTINGLY: Actuals (ph) every single day. Live pictures, good events.

BROWN: Yes.

MATTINGLY: Really consequential moments.

BROWN: It's all because I'm here, obviously.

MATTINGLY: Yes. You're bringing that to the table.

BROWN: Exactly.

MATTINGLY: You and the NATO summit.

BROWN: That's what I do.

MATTINGLY: Keeping an eye out all week. And this is a very consequential day in that summit happening right now. It is the final day of the NATO summit.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to meet face-to-face with President Biden and other world leaders in just a few moments as he pleads for more weapons to defeat Russia and an invitation to join that 31-member powerful NATO alliance.

Zelenskyy will be meeting one-on-one with Biden after the group meeting that will get under way in that room you see there that's currently empty. Leaders are expected to be walking in shortly in just a few moments.

BROWN: Zelenskyy has been criticizing NATO leaders for not giving a clear time line of when Ukraine can join the alliance. Here's what he said as he headed into the high-stakes summit this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT: We want to be on the same page with everybody, with all the understanding. And for today what we -- what we hear and understand that we'll have this invitation when security measures will allow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And we are told President Biden and the NATO leaders unanimously agreed to a substantial new aid package for Ukraine, and there will be a major announcement from Biden and G-7 leaders after the summit wraps up.

We have team coverage with correspondents at the summit in Lithuania and on the ground in Ukraine. Alex Marquardt is following reactions in Kyiv. Let's start with Melissa Bell in Vilnius.

So Melissa, what can you tell us?

MELISSA BELL, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, if yesterday, Pamela, was very much about what President Zelenskyy will not be walking away from Vilnius with, today is much more about those actual deliverables, and they are fairly substantial.

You're looking at a series of bilateral meetings that he's going through this morning, speaking to individual NATO leaders who are pledging, one after another, substantial military aid packages.

There will be that bilateral meeting later on with President Biden, and in terms of what the United States has already pledged it will be providing as part of its next military aid package: those controversial cluster munitions.

Now that's been welcomed yesterday already by the Ukrainian defense minister, saying, Oleksii Reznikov, that he believes they could be a game changer on the ground.

But perhaps more importantly, what we're going to hear today is something that's being dubbed NATO Light. The G-7 countries are coming together, and they're going to be announcing not just significant new aid packages in a military sense for Kyiv but perhaps, more importantly, more efforts politically, economically, to help with the further integration into the West of Ukraine. And that may be, in terms of the long term, one of the most significant things that -- that the president heads back to Kyiv with from this summit, Pamela.

[06:05:13]

MATTINGLY: Alex, I was struck this morning, our star colleague Betsy Klein, who's over in Vilnius with the president, was watching a question-and-answer session, a NATO public forum earlier today, where national security advisor Jake Sullivan was speaking.

And one of the questions he took from a Ukrainian anti-corruption activist criticized the decision not to immediately invite Ukraine into NATO in quite caustic terms.

And I'm intrigued. Sullivan's response, I think, was -- was trying to balance, I think, a very clear reality that we might actually get a window into when President Zelenskyy and Biden meet later today, and tension within the NATO alliance, with Ukraine and this ongoing conflict.

I'm interested. On the ground there, do you hear signs of that? Is there some frustration right now?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Phil, I think you know very well from covering the White House that Jake Sullivan is a very measured guy, and you could see in his response to this activist that he was bristling at this accusation that the U.S. is not doing enough.

I think this exchange between the activist and Jake Sullivan is essentially redux of what we've seen play out very publicly between the U.S. and Ukrainian leadership, albeit in a more polite and formal way, with Ukraine asking a lot more of the U.S. and NATO than they are willing to give.

So what we saw Sullivan here responding was, what Biden had said earlier is that Ukraine is not ready to join NATO yet because of the ongoing war in Ukraine, and that could draw NATO into a war with Russia.

But, also, very notably, a defensive Sullivan saying that "I think the American people deserve a certain level of gratitude for everything that the U.S. has offered Ukraine so far," tens of billions of dollars in dozens of different military aid packages.

So we have seen Zelenskyy in the past asking more of the U.S. We have seen some of this defensiveness from the U.S. side. And I think Melissa is absolutely right in framing the two days of this summit as yesterday was essentially Ukraine being told what it's not going to get, and it is that big-ticket item of not -- not getting an imminent invitation to NATO. So yes, Phil, there is immense frustration here on the ground, here in the Ukrainian capital.

And today is going to be about what Ukraine is getting, both in the short and the long term. So while Ukraine is not going to be getting this immediate invitation to NATO, we are expecting this major announcement from G-7 countries, which White House official Amanda Sloat said earlier is essentially going to send two messages: long-

term support for Ukraine, and a warning to Russia.

This is about integrating Ukraine further into the West in terms of politics, in terms of economics, and, of course, in terms of the military. We are seeing a number of countries offer huge new military aid packages to Ukraine.

So as President Zelenskyy comes back to Kyiv, he's certainly going to come back disappointed for not getting the biggest item on his wish list, but he will be able to say that he got significant deliverables, both in the short and the long term -- Phil, Pam.

MATTINGLY: Alex Marquardt for us in Kyiv. Melissa Bell for us at the NATO summit. Thanks so much.

And do stay tuned. We're going to be speaking with national security adviser Jake Sullivan later this morning in the show about that exchange and about what Alex was detailing here. There's going to be a significant announcement from the G-7 leaders later today about long- term security assistance, what details that may include. We're going to ask when Jake comes on.

BROWN: And, before that, we want to talk about the severe weather in this country. A perfect storm is unfolding across the globe, and that is what one scientist tells CNN.

Record heat and flooding have been seen daily all over the world. Tens of millions of Americans have been under heat advisories from California to Florida this week.

And South Florida experiencing a heat dome, bringing oppressive triple-digit temperatures and dangerously warming the ocean. Miami has seen 31 consecutive days of heat indexes over 100 degrees.

Let's go to meteorologist Derek van Dam, live in Miami. So tell us, what can people in South Florida expect today? They've had quite a week.

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, Pamela, it feels like you can literally drink the air here in Miami. But I think what's most impressive about this heat wave is the magnitude and the scope of it.

It covers 12 Southern U.S. states. It spans over 70 million Americans. And it's only beginning to ramp up now, and it's going to topple records from Florida all the way to California.

Take Miami, where I'm located here, today marks the 32nd consecutive day where heat indices -- that's temperature and humidity -- feels like over 100 degrees.

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And Phoenix, you're not sheltered from this heat, as well. You've had 12 consecutive days of your actual air temperature above 110. That's your third longest streak.

And in Las Vegas, you will likely see your all-time hottest temperature ever recorded later this week.

Now, it's just incredible. Seventy percent of the U.S. will experience temperatures over 90 degrees in the coming week. Fifty million Americans will experience triple-digit heat here in the next few days.

Now I'm in the thick of it, but this heat is dangerous. I spoke to an expert about it. Have a listen to hear what he said.

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BRIAN MCNOLDY, ROSENSTIEL SCHOOL OF MARINE, ATMOSPHERIC AND EARTH SCIENCE: It's been record-breaking, and breaking records day after day after day. So it's above and beyond normal by a lot. It just goes on and on with that, with the heat index. This is -- We've never had a string like this in recorded history. At the very least, it's uncomfortable. At the worst, it's actually deadly. (END VIDEO CLIP)

VAN DAM: The National Weather Service in Miami had an explicit statement: "If you consider yourself in good, physical shape and you come outside and do activity during peak heating days, it could be dangerous."

And if you're looking to cool off in the Atlantic Ocean, we are way past bathtub water. Pam, we are in hot tub territory right now.

BROWN: Yes, we are. The ocean, temperatures on land, you can't escape it. Derek van Dam, thank you.

VAN DAM: Right.

MATTINGLY: And now over to the Northeast, where more rain is in the forecast for flood-ravaged communities in Vermont. First responders have already pulled dozens of people to safety from the high waters. Streets, they're washed out. Buildings are submerged, dams nearing capacity. The ground beneath this rail line completely washed out.

CNN's Miguel Marquez is live in Montpelier with more. And Miguel, where and what are the concerns for first responders at this hour?

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, right now, this is the cleanup phase. The rivers have gone back into their banks. They do have capacity now to take more water on if it rains in the days ahead.

We won't see the sort of record-breaking rain that they saw earlier this week, which for here in Montpelier, it was the most rain they'd seen in a single day in the entire history.

This is what they're dealing with now. Lots of mud everywhere. So the streets here are going to be closed to any traffic and to cars parking today, so they can start cleaning up this mess.

And then, you know, this is Main and State. This is the main intersection in Montpelier, and this is what it sounds like. The alarms keep going off. I mean, it's a little eerie to hear.

And all the businesses here, I mean, they look normal, but at Bear Pond Books here, the water line came -- everything is just destroyed from that level on.

So every business along here. There's some businesses have started to pull out some of the stuff from inside, trying to pump out their basements and try to get back to normal.

But keep in mind, this is one of hundreds of towns across the Green Mountain State that now has to put everything back in order.

Back to you guys.

MATTINGLY: A lot of work ahead. Miguel Marquez, great reporting. Thank you. Just a couple hours from now, FBI Director Christopher Wray will face

some of his harshest critics on Capitol Hill over claims law enforcement agencies are being weaponized against Republicans.

BROWN: And Donald Trump's legal cases are colliding with his 2024 presidential campaign. How his court fights will impact his political run, up next.

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[06:17:13]

MATTINGLY: That is the most beautiful building in the world, the United States Capitol. That's a personal opinion.

BROWN: Spent a lot of time there.

MATTINGLY: Spent a lot of time there. So have a couple people that are sitting around that we're about to introduce.

Happening today, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, set to be grilled by some of his harshest critics on Capitol Hill. Now, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee panel are planning to aggressively question Wray on, quote, "the abuse of power in federal agencies."

This oversight hearing is his first since Republicans recently threatened to hold the FBI director in contempt of Congress.

CNN's Sara Murray joins us now.

All right, Murray. I'm a little reticent to ask you this question, but topics-wise, we've seen a lot of public commentary and bluster from Republicans on this panel specifically. What do we expect them to go after Wray on?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, it's possible you're going to see some more bluster today. Jim Jordan, the chair --

MATTINGLY: In Congress?

MURRAY: Exactly. Jim Jordan, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, has made it very clear that the FBI leadership is his No. 1 punching bag, and his chief criticism is that the FBI is too politicized, particularly against conservatives, which is interesting, because a lot of the FBI, frankly, is made up of conservatives.

But I think we're going to hear about some of these high-profile investigations. I think we're going to see Wray hammered over Special Counsel John Durham's report, saying there never should have been a full investigation into Donald Trump's campaign and his ties to Russia.

Also likely to hear some of their other complaints: you know, the notion that conservative parents were overly scrutinized for their complaints around school board meetings and that kind of thing. I mean, as you would expect, we have a very salty statement from Jerry

Nadler, who's the top Democrat on the committee, who's saying, "For Republicans this hearing is little more than performance art. It is an elaborate show designed with only two purposes in mind: to protect Donald Trump from the consequences of his actions, and to return him to the White House in the next election."

But there's another threat hanging out over here, and it's Phil's favorite. It's the appropriations process.

MATTINGLY: Appropriations.

MURRAY: Republicans are already threatening to cut back FBI funding. They want it to basically be cut back to what is absolutely essential. No politicized investigations. And are also saying, look, we don't want to give you any money for a new FBI headquarters unless you move it to Alabama.

MATTINGLY: We get to start about 302B's now?

MURRAY: No.

BROWN: Phil here is appropriations --

(CROSSTALK)

MATTINGLY: So do other people that are sitting with us right now, for the record. Murray, stick around.

BROWN: Yes. And those people are going to join us right now. CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams; CNN congressional correspondent Lauren Fox; and senior congressional correspondent for "The Washington Post," Paul Kane.

All right. So Lauren, look, the FBI director testified on Capitol Hill, right? In any other universe, this would be a big deal. We would expect substance. There are threats facing our nation every day that the FBI director can speak to.

But as Sara just laid out, there is every expectation this is going to devolve into a food fight, rather than a hearing of substance.

[06:20:03]

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and this is an opportunity where lawmakers could ask a series of questions on topics that they might be interested in that might have local implications, that they might be able to get more interesting information about how an investigation is going. They might get more information about how a process is going.

Instead, this is really all about politics. And there's a reason that Republicans want to bring him in, because they want to create those kinds of viral moments so they can show their conservative base back home that this is the moment that they are defending former president Donald Trump. And that is really what this is about. This is about making that tie back to the base, that we are doing everything we can up here in Washington, up here in Congress, to make sure we are protecting former President Trump.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Having worked both for Congress and in law enforcement, I can say, and I do believe, that congressional oversight is fundamentally a good thing for stamping out waste and fraud and abuse and helping the Justice Department or the FBI work better.

The problem right now is that there is a not silent majority on the House Judiciary Committee, which I testified in front of a couple months ago, that truly believes that our government is run by a deep- state cabal and in cahoots with Pfizer and Google, and all sorts of interests. That, I think, is going to get in the way of having any sort of productive hearing.

And so what you're going to see today are a lot of fireworks and theatrics and not really getting to the bottom of is the government's money being spent well; is the FBI being run efficiently? It's all going to be about politics and not really about making government work better.

MATTINGLY: OK. I think Fox and I have a similar perspective on this when it comes to watching these hearings. You know what members to watch, right, for actual substance. The Judiciary Committee is a big panel, not necessarily always maybe the most substantive members are put, to some degree, on that panel, because it's so large.

But there are members there that are going to ask good questions, that are going to ask questions that elicit answers that I think we all are sometimes interested in.

If you're watching this hearing today, who are you watching? What do you actually want to dig in on?

PAUL KANE, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I want to first of all see how Jim Jordan runs a big hearing like this.

The best hearings usually would involve almost thinking like an old football coach, where they would script the first 20 plays, where you would script the first few people asking questions, so that you're organized, so that you're not tripping over one another. You're not asking the Mar-a-Lago question after somebody else just asked the Mar- a-Lago question.

And, second, there's another party here. It's not just the Republicans. The Democrats get to ask almost as many questions. And I want to watch and see how they play the politics of this. They have spent so many years on the defensive with crime, and law and order, taking "defund the police" accusations.

So I want to see how Nadler and his side of the aisle, his side of the dais, how they play their questions and whether they want to come out of this looking like the law-and-order party, which would be a totally upside-down inverse world for those of us that have been covering this stuff for a long time.

BROWN: And of course, we know over this is Donald Trump, right? You're going to have people like Jim Jordan trying to impress Donald Trump, trying to defend him.

And Donald Trump, he's got a lot of legal woes he's facing right now. You just had the Georgia grand jury sworn in, looking into Donald Trump and possible election interference in the 2020 election. We could see charges next month. That could coincide with the August debate, right? And, you know, you have to wonder how is Trump going to navigate this? It's really uncharted territory.

FOX: I think it's going -- it's a real question, you know, for him and his attorneys and for his campaign. We saw it in a court filing, you know, just yesterday, them raising concerns about the classified documents case, saying you know, we can't possibly go to trial when we're in the middle of an election, because we need to be, you know, focused on running for president.

And in that court document, he also points out all his other legal responsibilities. You know, the indictment that was going on in New York, the civil case involving E. Jean Carroll. And that's all before we get a potential indictment in Georgia and while we wait to see what Special Counsel Jack Smith does on the January 6th probe.

I think it is going to be a real challenge. You can envision Donald Trump showing up in court and then just hopping on his plane and flying to a nearby swing state and doing a rally that night. But it's obviously not an ideal position to be in for a candidate.

BROWN: Yes.

MATTINGLY: Elliot, can I ask you? The question I had yesterday when the Trump legal team filed in the documents case --

WILLIAMS: Right.

MATTINGLY: -- saying this needs to be delayed. There's -- he's in the middle of a campaign. This is politics. We can't do this in the middle of a presidential campaign.

There's not a lot of precedent for this, as a lawyer. And because of that, I think as opposed to just being like, Oh, that's absurd or, Oh, that's just a political move there, the legal theory here, is there one, and what are they trying to flesh out?

WILLIAMS: Two things can be totally true here, Phil. Which is that, No. 1, he's actually trying to delay this trial and push it off into the future as far as possible.

But two, he's a criminal defendant who is entitled to a trial at a time that is legally appropriate and sound for him. And it's really dangerous for prosecutors and the court to sort of step in the way of that. [06:25:09]

Now, the prosecutors were quite clear in their filings that, look, this trial can be had in a couple of months or, you know, several months. No. 2, the fact that there's a presidential campaign coming is irrelevant. No. 3, you can always pick a jury who can assess even a famous defendant fairly.

So he's pushing his arguments very far, but you really don't want to run the risk of doing something that jeopardizes that fair trial question and getting the case tossed out on appeal if he actually ends up getting convicted down the road.

MATTINGLY: You can't both sides this, Elliot.

WILLIAMS: Oh, I'm going to both sides --

MATTINGLY: I need definitive -- definitive answers like P.K. scripting 20 plays for the Delaware Blue Hens this fall.

KANE: If only. If only.

BROWN: All right. Thank you all. Appreciate you waking up early to be with us.

Well, overnight Iowa Republicans passing a bill banning most abortions after six weeks.

MATTINGLY: And Chinese hackers breached U.S. government email accounts, and it went undetected for a month. Why did it take so long? We'll get to that, ahead.

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BROWN: Taking a live look here at the Iowa state house in Des Moines, where late last night, the Republican-led legislature passed a ban.

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