Return to Transcripts main page

CNN This Morning

Malcolm Nance is Interviewed about Trevor Reed; McCarthy Warming to Impeachment; Investigation into Harvard's Legacy Admissions; U.S. Women Take on Netherlands. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired July 26, 2023 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

MALCOLM NANCE, FORMER UKRAINIAN LEGIONNAIRE: Contract with the Ukrainian Army. The International Legion, it's an actual Ukrainian army battalion, series of battalions, that are attached to Ukrainian Army brigades. So, these are not mercenaries or just rogue foreign fighters at all. We are part of a network of lawful combatants that are part - you know, members of the Ukrainian Army.

For him to have been (INAUDIBLE) shows that he was part of the hospital network that brought him out. So, which unit he was assigned to specifically, we don't know at this time.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: So, we should point out, early in the war, I know President Zelenskyy had said, hey, if you want to come, we will supply the weapons. As we pointed out, the administration, the United States, has said, look, we really do not advise this.

You did go. We have reported here at CNN, early on in the war about who was showing up. There were former military officials, right, former enlisted members, but then there were also, in many ways, sort of a ragtag group of Americans who were showing up saying, give me a gun.

Where do things stand today? Are these fighters helping or hurting efforts in Ukraine?

NANCE: Yes, well, first off, very early in the war, I mean within the first two weeks of the war, a lot of people were showing up there. By the end of the first month, the International Legion had gotten its act together, certainly after the cruise missile attack when their training facility at Yagarif (ph), and we started weeding people out. They do intensive background checks. Now you have to provide documentation as to your military service. Yes, some people who didn't have military service have leaked through. Some of them have performed admirably and actually heroically.

But for the most part, we have very well-trained people inside the battalions. There are no more freelancers. People just don't come to Ukraine anymore. The Ukrainians themselves are very aware that Russia could have been trying to infiltrate agents or, you know, paid contractors to come in and try to conduct intelligence operations. So, the Ukrainians take every individual that comes into the country very, very seriously.

HILL: And -

NANCE: It is not a (INAUDIBLE) - nothing like it was in the first days. Not at all.

HILL: So, to that -- to that point, we should point out, we know Trevor Reed, a former Marine, you were a Navy cryptologist.

NANCE: Right.

HILL: You were a security expert. When you look at all of this, do you think he should have been there? Does this raise security concerns for you about what could have happened if Trevor Reed was captured?

NANCE: Well, we always have those concerns. I mean, I worked for the ministry of defense intelligence, which is their major intelligence apparatus. And one of their chief concerns was that, you know, I was such a high-profile person, I come from news media and had, you know, decades of U.S. intelligence experience, about what would happen if you're captured. But, you know, when I went out to the battalions, that was not the issue. The issue was providing critical manpower, critical, you know, information and fighting on the front lines. I've served behind Russian lines in last year's Kharkiv counter offensive.

So, Trevor Reed would not have been considered, you know, a noteworthy person so long as he could obey the laws of the Ukrainian armed forces, follow the orders of Ukrainian officers and perform commendably while in combat.

HILL: In terms of the concerns that have been raised about how this news could impact efforts to bring Paul Whalen and Evan Gershkovich home, do you agree that this could, in fact, complicate those matters?

NANCE: You know, in some way. When I was in the armed forces, I actually ran a program which we called Hostile Government Detention, where we trained people in how to behave during the kind of detention that Trevor Reed and Paul Whalen and others were involved in.

Russia is carrying out these abductions in their own country on the flimsiest of charges strictly as leverage points against the United States. I don't think that this matters in the long run. When Russia does this, they have objectives that they want. They have spies in the west that they want returned, and they want to apply pressure to the United States. So, it doesn't matter whether Trevor Reed would have fought or not, Russia and countries like that who carry out hostile government detention are going to do it anyway.

HILL: Malcolm Nance, good to have your perspective. Appreciate it.

Poppy.

NANCE: My pleasure.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Fascinating conversation. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis shaking up and trimming down his

campaign team in his race for the White House. We've got that new reporting ahead.

And, again, no one won the jackpot in the Mega Millions drawing. No one matched all six winning numbers. So, now the jackpot for next Friday's drawing is $910 million. It is the fifth largest jackpot in Mega Millions history. Go buy your ticket.

Be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:38:05]

HARLOW: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has issued his most explicit threat yet on launching an impeachment inquiry into President Biden.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): The more this continues to unravel, it rises to the level of impeachment inquiry.

What that simply provides is that the American public has a right to know. And this allows Congress to get the information to be able to know the truth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: McCarthy did acknowledge House Republicans have yet to bring evidence, a lot of evidence, over what they have alleged, which is that there's a connection between the president and his son Hunter's business dealings. President Biden was seen laughing off a question from reporters about McCarthy's impeachment inquiry threat. There he is.

Let's talk about this and a lot more. CNN political analyst Coleman Hughes is with us, and "New York Times" national political correspondent Shane Goldmacker.

Good morning to you both. Thanks for being here.

Shane, let me just start with you. I mean it's - there was one impeachment in the first 200 years of this country and now, in the last, you know, 25 years, we could potentially be looking at four. I think - I think the American people need to understand how significant this is to proceed with something like this.

SHANE GOLDMACHER, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Maybe not just the American people but the Congress, right?

HARLOW: Yes.

GOLDMACHER: I mean I think it's quite possible that Barack Obama becomes one of the last American presidents who doesn't get impeached when the opposing party takes over the Congress. The possibility that Joe Biden was going to get impeached, I think, was - was really great in the moment that Kevin McCarthy took control. The House Republicans have a desire to go after President Biden. And to some extent this has been Kevin McCarthy holding them back and he's sort of letting the leash a little looser. They have a little bit more room to maneuver.

Look, as he even said, this would be a process to potentially get to the truth versus saying he has the answers yet. If the moment that they think they have that answer, I think they're going to proceed with an impeachment and, you know, there's just a desire in the Republican conference to get there. And he has to deal with the fact that his majority hangs on a series of Republicans who sit in districts that President Biden won in.

[06:40:06]

HILL: Our excellent hill team of reporters, too, also reporting overnight there has been this push from some top GOP officials to go after the top brass, right? Let's leave the - let's forget about the cabinet members. Maybe let's forget about Merrick Garland. Instead, let's focus on President Biden now.

How much of that do you think is also political timing given that we are potentially waiting for another indictment facing former President Trump?

COLEMAN HUGHES, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I'm sure that's not far from their minds. But the - you know, what's happening is there has been a steady drip of nothing directly damning yet on the president, but there has been a drip of, you know, smoke, not yet fire. And, you know, we're - we're -- we know now that there's an FBI document, that there's been a confidential source who certainly believes that the Burisma executives thought they were paying the Bidens for something, right? That doesn't directly implicate Joe per se, but this is what people are seeing and they're thinking, perhaps there's yet another shoe to drop and there may be something impeachable.

Now, I don't think there is yet and there may never be. And - and the last thing to say about this I think is, if we're talking about things from 2015-2016, that would be the first time in American history that a president got impeached for something that was done before he took office. That would be setting a very strange precedent who -

HARLOW: In a vice president capacity

HUGHES: That's right. Yes.

HARLOW: You're talking about the 1023 FBI document, which we should note the FBI has made clear doesn't reflect the conclusions of their investigators. It's merely documenting information from whistleblowers, from others who come forward. And in terms of --

HUGHES: So, they may have other information that refutes that.

HARLOW: In terms of doing the - the - you know, the allegation that the president or his son was doing the bidding of Burisma to get Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor, fired, I mean that was a position at the State Department and a number of western leaders that he was not effective and should go.

HUGHES: Right, it was, but it - you know, in many -- there are many situations where people can have a conflict of interest where they make a right decision that also happens to benefit them in some way, right?

We saw that there was always smoke around Bill Clinton's decision to bomb the al-Shifa factory. Did he do that to distract the public? There was speculation. And then the 9/11 Commission looked into it and they said it was aboveboard. That could be what happens now. But the public should get to know, was there a conflict of interest in that decision made?

HILL: As we look at everything and where we are right now, there's also a larger question, and we touched on this a little bit yesterday, about what isn't getting done when there is such a focus on impeachment. Do you envision any of that shifting in this Congress?

GOLDMACHER: Um, no. I mean I think that the reality is -

HILL: Rhetorical question, Erica.

GOLDMACHER: I mean the reality is the (ph) government is -- they're not going to do a ton, right, and especially heading into an election year. Kevin McCarthy is really hamstrung between, again, those Republicans who sit in districts that Joe Biden won, districts where Joe Biden is popular. That's where his majority is built. And the desires of the vast majority of the rest of the party in his conference, which want to be more aggressive with the Biden administration. There hasn't - there has not been a close relationship between the president and the White House and the Republican Congress, not just because of investigations, but just on -- on any matter of negotiations. They're trying to avoid a government shutdown this fall more than any proactive legislation at this point.

HARLOW: Harvard-trained lawyer, governor of Florida, now presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis, said this about Trump's impeachments and any potential impeachment against Biden.

Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL) AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You look at they impeached Trump for a phone call. Are you trying to tell me Biden's conduct isn't as significant of that? It's way more significant. So, they are absolutely within their rights to do that. I think what the corruption that's surrounding this family is really unprecedented.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: He's talking -- he said, they impeached Trump just for a phone call.

HUGHES: No.

HARLOW: No. And, by the way, it's only referring to one of the impeachments.

HUGHES: They impeached Trump for a -- what was a pretty clear quid pro quo, find dirt on my political opponent and I'm withholding funds, right? Determining the U.S. foreign policy based on something that really could only benefit him, right? That's a very clear case. What we're seeing with Biden right now is some suggestions that were -- if more evidence, more direct, damning evidence were to emerge, it might start approaching similarity, but we're nowhere near a comparison between these two situations yet.

HILL: All right, speaking of the DeSantis campaign, you have some reporting, Shane, about the - the layoffs, the firings that we have seen. You saw that overnight.

I was also struck by, in some of your reporting noting, a person close to the governor who still supports him told you that DeSantis had experienced some challenging learning curve that left him a little bit jarred.

GOLDMACHER: Yes.

HILL: Did he learn from the learning curve, I guess, is the question?

GOLDMACHER: I mean that's really to be seen. He's made a series of changes in the last couple weeks, or announced some of them as a series of changes. The biggest of which is he's cutting his campaign staff.

[06:45:01]

As of yesterday, he had laid off 38 people at a campaign that started with more than 90. Actually, I think the 90 number is almost more interesting because that's an enormous size for a candidate in a primary. It's double the size of former President Trump's campaign team. And so this is a downsizing that he needed to do because he did raise a lot of money. He actually raised the most money of any Republican in the field in direct money -

HILL: And spent a lot.

GOLDMACHER: And then spent so much of it that he was on the kind of trajectory that looked in a bad direction.

So, this is a thing, if he wants to challenge Trump and have money to go on television, can't be spending money on private planes, on fancy hotels and on staff in July of the year before the election.

HILL: Does he also, really quickly, need to work on messaging, not just money?

GOLDMACHER: There's real questions about his messaging, absolutely. HILL: Yes.

HARLOW: Thank you both. Shane, Coleman, good to have you. Appreciate it.

HILL: Up next, what the Department of Education is now hoping to find as it investigates Harvard's admissions process.

HARLOW: And officials say they have obtained a, quote, massive amount of material from the home of the suspect in the Gilgo Beach serial killer. What exactly was recovered? We'll tell you, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILL: Harvard University under investigation this morning. The Department of Education is looking into whether the school's donor and the legacy admissions practice is discriminatory. A group suing the school asked the department to investigate days after the Supreme Court gutted affirmative action in college admissions.

CNN's Athena Jones is here.

So, give us a sense, how big of a role do legacy admissions play at Harvard?

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they play a big role and too big a role according to these three black and Latino groups that filed this suit calling on Harvard to end this practice of preferential treatment for these legacy applicants. These are people who are related to donors or related to Harvard alumni. And they are way more likely to get in.

These alumni - these legacy applicants are overwhelmingly white, 70 percent white. And the Department of Education is going to be investigating whether these preferences violate Title 6 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in any program that receives federal money, which Harvard does.

[06:50:12]

You know, Michael Kippens (ph), who's a lawyer for Lawyers for Civil Rights, which is the group that filed the claim on behalf of these three civil rights black and Latino groups, said this is exactly what they wanted to happen when they filed this complaint. They're getting exactly what they wanted.

And this is important. Let's remind folks of the stunning statistics that were included in the lawsuit. They had a lot of data. That is - that is a graphic showing just how much - how big a part of each graduating class, starting in 2022, was made up by these legacy admissions, people related to donors or related to alumni. That's a huge percentage.

And we also know that if you're related to a donor, you're seven times more likely to get in than an ordinary applicant, six times more likely to get in if you're related to alumni. And, as I said, these -- these groups, of course, want this practice to end. They call it discriminatory. And they want Harvard to do what several other colleges have done. Most recently, Wesleyan, this was just last week, Wesleyan said it was ending legacy preferences. So have Johns Hopkins, Amherst, MIT and Carnegie Mellon.

HARLOW: Isn't -- I want to know how Harvard's responding. But also at the crux of this you -- it's minority groups that are suing because largely, given the history of this country, the donor - the biggest donors in the past and also legacy have been overwhelmingly white.

JONES: Absolutely. I mean the past preferences lead to the current situation.

HARLOW: Yes.

JONES: So, I'm much less likely to have a parent to have gone to Harvard than someone who - who else, someone who is richer or white. Seventy percent of these applicants have been white.

And here is Harvard's response in part from their spokesperson. They say they are reviewing aspects of their admissions policies and they say our review includes examination of a range of data and information, along with learnings from Harvard's efforts over the past decade, to strengthen our ability to attract and support a diverse intellectual community that is fundamental to our pursuit of academic excellence.

And they say there they're going to redouble their efforts to attract students from all different backgrounds.

But this is getting a lot of attention and it's going to continue to get a lot.

HILL: Yes. Yes. Yes.

HARLOW: It's about an equal - an equal playing field -

JONES: Yes.

HARLOW: You know, to have that shot.

HILL: Athena, thank you.

HARLOW: Thanks.

Another legal bruising for the Biden administration. A federal judge has blocked the president's asylum policy. What does this mean for migrants trying to cross the border?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:55:55]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Messi, with Gazan (ph) off his line. Messi off the post! Puts the ball in! Of course he did!

Over to Robert Taylor. Taylor cutting it back. Martinez (INAUDIBLE) Messi! Oh, my word! He has done it again. Lionel Messi!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Two thrilling goals last night by Lionel Messi in his second game with the team. The soccer superstar led Inter Miami to a 4-0 win over Atlanta United. Messi mania is playing into the soccer fever that's taking over America right now. It's about time, by the way. And tonight the U.S. Women's National Team takes the field for their second World Cup game in New Zealand.

Andy Scholes joins us with more on all of this.

It is about time. The rest of the world knew this and was obsessed with soccer, football, and now we're getting there.

HILL: Time for some catch-up.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Yes. Yes, guys, what a time to be a soccer fan here in the U.S. You know, no team, women's or men's, has ever won three straight World Cups. And the U.S. women's quest for history is taking place at an incredible time for soccer here in our country. You know, Messi has been nothing short of amazing since arriving to Miami. And a team that normally plays thousands of miles away has become a fan favorite here in the U.S.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: USA! USA! (INAUDIBLE). USA!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That pretty much sums it up.

SCHOLES (voice over): U.S. soccer fans are confident.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am predicting they absolutely three-peat.

SCHOLES: And ready to celebrate the World Cup's first ever back-to- back-to-back champion, but the team is not getting ahead of themselves as they prepare for a rematch of the 2019 championship game against the Netherlands.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is going to be an incredibly difficult matchup. Very challenging. We know that we have to be at our best.

SCHOLES: The U.S. women's quest for history abroad happening at the same time as the greatest player ever, Lionel Messi, has taken his talents to South Beach.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Messi!

SCHOLES: After a Hollywood debut where he scored the winning goal in front of the likes of LeBron, Serena and Kim Kardashian, Messi following that up with two goals in the first 22 minutes Tuesday night, wowing the home crowd, leading Inter Miami to a 4-0 win over Atlanta United.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my word, he has done it again. Lionel Messi.

SCHOLES: Messi mania completely taking over, selling out stadiums across the country.

IGNACLO CUBERO, CO-FOUNDER, EVENTELLECT: Prices are way up. They're up about 10 to 12 times what a normal MLS game would be selling for.

Never seen anything like this. To have the best player in the world come over in the prime of their career to play in America. There's nothing -- never been anything like that.

SCHOLES: His latest soccer boom comes as many Americans have fallen in love with Wrexham, a British team thousands of miles away who are now an unlikely box office smash thanks to "Deadpool" actor Ryan Reynolds, and "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's" Rob McElhenney, who purchased the team in 2020 and have invested $3.7 million into the club. Ahead of season two of their hit FX show "Welcome to Wrexham," the team is touring the U.S. after earning promotion to a higher league last season.

RYAN REYNOLDS, CO-OWNER, WREXHAM AFC: People said at the beginning, why Wrexham, why Wrexham? This is exactly why Wrexham.

SCHOLES: And Reynolds and McElhenney are dreaming of even more.

REYNOLDS: I love just hearing friends of mine, people that are, you know, some are in show biz and some are not in show biz, different walks of life, just saying the words - the word Wrexham now, like it's just a normal part of the lexicon. I just think it's so cool.

ROB MCELHENNEY, CO-OWNER, WREXHAM AFC: I get asked more about this than anything - anything in show business, that's for sure.

REYNOLDS: Yes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHOLES: Yes, and amazing that a small town in Wales with a population of about 62,000 has become a household name in the U.S.

And, you know, guys, we say every World Cup soccer is just growing in popularity here. And it certainly is. Whether, you know, it's the U.S. women, Messi or Wrexham, there's so many fun storylines. And in 2026 we are hosting the men's World Cup, along with Mexico and Canada. And that is certainly going to be awesome.

HILL: It is. My son is counting down to it. He's very excited.

HARLOW: Oh, I bet he is.

HILL: Ted Lasso also helping just a little bit, too.

HARLOW: Love it.

HILL: Just a little bit.

Andy, thanks.

SCHOLES: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

[07:00:00]

HARLOW: That was great.

CNN THIS MORNING continues right now.