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CNN This Morning
At Least 2 Dead, 400,000 in Dark after Storms Ravage East Coast; Trump Hits Campaign Trail Amid Frenzy of Developments in Criminal Cases; Western Allies Get 'Sobering' Update on Ukraine's Counteroffensive; Alabama Boat Brawl Under Investigation. Aired 6- 6:30a ET
Aired August 08, 2023 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. So glad you're with us. It is a Tuesday, full of news. Victor Blackwell by my side. Good morning.
[06:00:43]
VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Good to be back.
HARLOW: Good to have you.
BLACKWELL: Here all week.
HARLOW: Yes, we're so happy about it. Let's get started with "Five Things to Know" for this Tuesday, August 8.
New this morning, the East Coast cleaning up after deadly storms. Trees are down, roads are blocked. Hundreds of thousands of people without power. Already, more than 300 flights are cancelled.
BLACKWELL: Happening today, the police chief in Montgomery, Alabama, is expected to reveal more information about that brawl that broke out on the city's river front. It started after a black dock worker was attacked by a group of white people. So far, no arrests. But four warrants have been issued.
Right now, Los Angeles City workers are on a 24-hour strike. Eleven thousand workers, including sanitation workers, engineers, traffic officers, lifeguards, all headed for the picket lines. They say it's a fight for fair contracts.
HARLOW: This hour, polls open in Ohio as voters decide whether to make it harder to amend their state constitution. It is part of a real proxy fight over abortion rights in the state. Early voting turnout has been huge. More than half a million votes already cast.
BLACKWELL: You feeling lucky? I know it's early, but you know, check the gauge. The drawing for the largest Mega Millions jackpot in history is tonight. A little more than $1.5 billion is the jackpot.
CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.
BLACKWELL: Yes, I am. HARLOW: Did you buy your lottery ticket?
BLACKWELL: I was in a pool for the last drawing for Mega Millions, but yes, I'll get in this one.
HARLOW: Yes. That would make for a good week in New York.
BLACKWELL: Yes. It's worth it.
HARLOW: All right. We'll get to the lottery in a moment.
We do begin this morning with those powerful and deadly storms that moved across the Eastern United States. They killed at least two people. This morning, hundreds of thousands are waking up in the dark.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TYSON WINTER, WITNESS: Oh, my God.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: That is a tree snapped in half by the wind in Mooresville, North Carolina. While residents in Indiana's Orange County are digging out after a tornado pummeled granaries, ripped off roofs there. Look at that.
BLACKWELL: Nearly 400,000 people are without power, from North Carolina to Tennessee.
Maryland State Police say 47 people were rescued after being trapped in their vehicles for hours when those strong winds downed the power lines.
Now, it's just about 6 a.m. on the East Coast here. And already, more than 300 fight -- flights, rather, have been cancelled. More than 700 delayed.
Let's go to meteorologist Derek van Dam now in the Weather Center. I mean, when you look at some of these pictures and the cell phone video coming in, you can understand how this has been so challenging for people. And there is more coming.
DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, Victor, Poppy. You know, after yesterday's hurricane-force wind gusts and softball-sized hail that fell from the sky, today is going to feel like a walk in the park for the areas that were impacted most by the storm system.
But the severe weather threat not done just yet. And it's all part of the larger storm system that rocked the Eastern Seaboard yesterday. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
VAN DAM (voice-over): With wind gusts estimated over 75 miles per hour, the impact was immediate.
WINTER: Oh my God. Holy (EXPLETIVE DELETED).
VAN DAM (voice-over): In Mooresville, North Carolina, Tyson Winter captured this video of a tree snapping in half and falling to the ground near an apartment complex.
Heavy rain, thunder, and violent winds hammered cities and towns East of the Mississippi River. By Monday night, there had been more than 400 reports of strong winds across the region. And more than a million customers were without power across 11 states, in states like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Maryland, according to PowerOutage.US.
Monday's severe weather is impacting around 120 million people along the Eastern U.S., from downed trees in Hartford County, Maryland; to widespread damage to homes and public buildings from upstate New York all the way down to Alabama, causing a lot of mess and spreading hazards along the way.
In Washington, D.C., CNN captured this video of a man removing a large branch from a city street. This photo shows downed power lines littering a roadway in Carroll County, Maryland, after a storm passed through the area.
[06:05:10]
Another driver captured the chaos caused by those electric poles on Maryland's Route 140 in Westminster. Maryland state Police say over 30 vehicles were stuck in the incident, but no injuries were reported.
In many parts, the storm caused extreme low visibility. In downtown Philadelphia, a live tower camera showed the magnitude of the weather conditions.
In Victory Gardens, New Jersey, several residents displaced after a tree fell on a home, bringing down power lines and crashing cars. According to CNN affiliate WABC, the house was occupied at the time, but there were no injuries reported.
The storms caused major travel disruptions in the skies on Monday. According to data from Flight Aware, more than 10,000 U.S. flights were impacted by the severe storms on Monday. Among them, over 8,500 flights were delayed and more than 1,700 cancelled.
All this as new weather threats are expected to develop for Tuesday afternoon, with a risk of severe thunderstorms in several Southern states.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAN DAM (on camera): The severe weather threat along the I-95 corridor has largely come to an end, with the exception of a marginal risk across the greater Boston metropolitan region.
But great risk -- that's a level 2 of 5 -- a slight risk, extends across the Gulf Coast states, and then also across the Central Plains today.
It's just with these temperatures being so hot across the South, it doesn't take much for the severe thunderstorms to bubble over and cause some of these damaging winds and large hail that we saw yesterday -- Victor, Poppy.
HARLOW: Yes, no -- No question about it. Those pictures really speak 1,000 words. Derek, we appreciate it. Thank you.
BLACKWELL: Well, just hours from now, Donald Trump is set to hit the campaign trail as he faces a whirlwind of developments in multiple criminal cases against him.
He'll be speaking in New Hampshire, while his defense team battles with Special Counsel Jack Smith over a protective order in the election interference case.
Smith is trying to block Trump from disclosing evidence to the public before the trial. He's accusing Trump and his lawyer of wanting to try the case in the media instead of the courtroom, but Trump's team says Smith is trying to restrict his free speech rights.
The judge says she's going to order a hearing this week as she prepares to decide.
CNN exclusively reported that Trump's ally and former New York City police commissioner Bernie Kerik met with the special counsel's investigators yesterday, and the focus was Trump's alleged coconspirator, Rudy Giuliani.
HARLOW: Meanwhile, in Atlanta, there are some new signs indictments could be imminent for the alleged scheme to -- to reject the results of the election. The state's ex-lieutenant governor, a contributor to CNN -- you see him on this program a lot -- Jeff Duncan, well, he's been subpoenaed to testify to the Fulton County grand jury.
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JEFF DUNCAN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I'm going to certainly keep the details to -- to myself, just to protect the integrity of the investigation. But there's a very clear subpoena that was delivered to us late last week, and we will certainly answer the questions that they've got before us and answer their call to show up for this -- for the grand jury.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: Also the Trump-appointed judge overseeing the Mar-a-Lago classified documents probe -- that's the other federal probe against Trump -- some new developments there.
That judge questioning why the Justice Department used an out-of-state grand jury in Washington, D.C., to bring the indictment.
Let's bring CNN senior crime and justice reporter Katelyn Polantz in for more. Good morning. A lot of developments. What can you tell us?
KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, this January 6th federal case, let's look at that.
That is where there have been five filings from the Justice Department and Trump's team together since Friday. That's a lot of stuff that anyone would be filing in court.
And the judge there has already signaled that she is not going to be interested in much like these shenanigans whenever they're debating back and forth.
The debate in that case right now, it' s about pretrial publicity. How much can Donald Trump and his team talk publicly about the information that they're getting from the Justice Department as they work towards trial.
And so the Justice Department has to turn over information, evidence to Donald Trump and his team that they don't have at this time. There's all kinds of stuff that's out there that's public that Donald Trump would have access to. There's his own information that he and his team has -- have collected as the January 6th investigation has unfurled. But in this situation, there's specific information that they haven't seen yet.
And so the debate legally right now is that the Justice Department wants all of that to be locked down so that Donald Trump and others can't talk about it publicly or release it before a trial and possibly infringe upon his ability to have a fair trial.
Trump's team is saying, free speech. We should be able to talk about this. We should be able to only have a small subset of that under a court order that would say you can't disclose it before trial. That's what's before the judge right now.
The Justice Department came back last night in a filing and essentially said, there's no law or even purpose for Donald Trump to be out there wanting to talk about evidence before trial that he hasn't seen yet.
[06:10:12]
But, you know, this has been a lot of discussion back and forth where they're sharing each other's social media posts. They're talking about politics.
And so the judge stepped in last night and said, We're going to have a hearing. We're going to have it before Friday. Let's figure out a time and date to do that.
And so, we're going to have to wait and see what the judge does here, but she is not playing around here. And she does want to get this settled pretty quickly.
BLACKWELL: All right. Let's talk about this CNN exclusive reporting that Bernie Kerik met with the special counsel for five hours yesterday. What do we know about that, what they're trying to learn from him?
POLANTZ: Yes. So, his attorney was actually quite clear about what Bernie Kerik was asked about when he met with the special counsel's office yesterday for an interview over at their offices.
His attorney, Tim Parlatore, came out of the special counsel's office alongside Bernie Kerik and said that they were discussing what the Giuliani team was doing. What Rudy Giuliani and others whom Bernie Kerik was working with after the 2020 election to try and find evidence of fraud, which they couldn't find, what they were doing between election day in 2020 to January 6th.
So the reason this matters -- we've heard about all kinds of witnesses -- is twofold. One, this is the first time we've seen investigative activity, really, after that indictment of Donald Trump last week.
And on top of that, we're seeing investigative activity on a particular lane, about Rudy Giuliani and what Rudy Giuliani was doing. He's one of those conspirators that's uncharged in the Trump indictment. But there's a lot of stuff to still watch, including whether grand jury activity will pick up again.
BLACKWELL: All right. Katelyn Polantz with the reporting. Thanks so much.
HARLOW: Let's talk about all these headlines. Senior reporter for "The Root," Jessica Washington is with us. CNN senior political analyst and anchor, John Avlon; and our senior legal analyst Elie Honig.
Good morning, guys.
JOHN AVLON, CNN ANCHOR/SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning.
HARLOW: Elie, let me just start with you, because I think your take on what the Trump team is asking for here in their new filing is really interesting and important. You think what they're saying is reasonable, to say you can't totally limit our -- you can't muzzle our client. There is some middle ground here.
ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: So this happens sometimes in court, blessedly, where both sides are actually being quite reasonable.
DOJ is saying, We don't want Donald Trump to be able to take any of the discovery materials that we turn over -- witness statements, evidence -- and bring those public.
And Donald Trump's team, they didn't come back and say, No, we should get to use all of it. They said, how about we just limit that to sensitive materials. And we'll let you, DOJ, decide in the first instance what's sensitive and what's not.
And DOJ then came back and said the purpose of discovery is not to enable your P.R. efforts. It's to inform you and let you prepare for trial.
So all of those are good points. And Judge Chutkan is going to have to sort through them.
Look, I suspect she's going to try to find some middle ground here, because while there have to be some limits on what you can say publicly -- you can't cross the line into jury tampering or witness tampering or intimidation-- you do have as a defendant, the right; you can criticize your judge. You can criticize the case against you; you can criticize the prosecution.
HARLOW: OK. But just -- it is a matter of how you read something, then, I guess. Because what the Trump team is saying is when Trump put on Truth Social, "You come after me, I'll go after you," that was political, not going after special counsel or anyone here. I mean --
HONIG: Yes. That's a bit of a separate issue. His statements, his inflammatory statements are separate from this protective order. The question with this protective order --
HARLOW: Yes.
HONIG: -- what can he do with the evidence. But you're right.
HARLOW: Can he keep saying those things?
HONIG: There's a fine line that needs to be walked here. And Donald Trump, look, he's masterful at saying things that give him plausible deniability. But we all know, and more than people at this table, understand what he means.
BLACKWELL: So that's the overlap. Is it legal is political, political is legal for Trump's strategy. Does that make sense from a political perspective, that the Trump campaign says, Don't keep everything from us. Just the sensitive elements?
AVLON: Well, to your point about the blurring of the political and the legal, I mean, Trump is willing to weaponize whatever he can get his hands on. And that's why I think the context of Trump's statements matters.
You know, he has a history of using threats and intimidation. Now, whether that crosses over into witness temperatures becomes the question for the judge. That's that gray area.
But there's -- there's every reason to question how they will use this information in the court of public opinion, because that always seems to be Donald Trump's first instinct.
HARLOW: What is the significance of Judge Aileen Cannon -- she's the one overseeing the Mar-a-Lago documents probe -- questioning whether it was legal to use a D.C. grand jury as part of this probe? Right? They had a grand jury in Southern Florida and one in D.C.
Explain why that matters, given the optics of some prior decisions she had made that were in Trump's favor earlier, way earlier on in all of this, after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago. Explain why people are questioning this.
JESSICA WASHINGTON, SENIOR REPORTER, "THE ROOT": Yes. I think there have been a lot of eyes on this judge. I mean, for one, she's a Trump- appointed judge. And I'm not saying that makes her biased in any way, but that is the perception, perhaps.
And then you also think about the fact that she ruled in a way that was favorable to Trump that got overturned to the point of the --
[06:15:05]
HARLOW: I think unanimously overturned.
WASHINGTON: Unanimously overturned, and they specifically said, you know, This does not have any legal precedent.
So you have a judge that has been seen repeatedly to be favorable to Trump. And now, she is once again in the spotlight in this major way.
So I think every single decision she makes, particularly decisions that are favorable to Trump, or that could delay this trial until after the election, is going to be in the spotlight.
BLACKWELL: Elie, it was just two weeks ago, right, that the -- Fani Willis in Fulton County said that the work is accomplished in that investigation.
HONIG: Right.
BLACKWELL: And now we've learned that the Georgia -- former Georgia lieutenant governor, Jeff Duncan, is subpoenaed in the election interference case there. So which is it?
HONIG: Yes.
BLACKWELL: Why is he now being asked to come and answer questions?
HONIG: Well, work is done; apparently not. If Jeff Duncan, our colleague, just got a subpoena, I guess it's not quite done yet.
This could be a final stage. I mean, maybe she wasn't speaking quite literally, done, done, done. But this could be a finishing touch.
I was trying to think about what former Lieutenant Governor Duncan would have to say. I mean, remember, as lieutenant governor in Georgia, he was in charge of the Senate. That was one of his state constitutional duties.
And there was false testimony, allegedly, by Rudy Giuliani given to the Senate. So he could be sort of a capstone witness.
But yes, I agree. I mean, I still expect her to indict very, very shortly. I don't think this is some unexpected speed bump that's going to push the timeline back.
HARLOW: Well, I guess, do you want to speak -- Go ahead. AVLON: This gets back to the Rudy of it all, which is tied into CNN's
exclusive reporting around -- around Bernie Kerik.
HARLOW: Yes.
AVLON: You know, obviously, I worked with Bernie Kerik. I worked for Rudy Giuliani a long time ago.
But the fact that Bernie was so embedded with Donald Trump this time around -- you know, he's got a lot of access and a lot of information. And the question is whether they were, you know, proceeding in good faith, which is hard to do if you have absolutely zero evidence.
But as I've said before and I'll say again, you know, hyperpartisanship is a hell of a drug.
HARLOW: Just one other issue. So after Trump was found liable for defaming and -- and his physical attacks on E. Jean Carroll, he countersued her for defamation for comments she made here on CNN. And now judge has dismissed that. Significance?
WASHINGTON: yes. I think it's incredibly significant. It is one of these cases that we're just not talking about.
HARLOW: Right.
WASHINGTON: I mean, the fact that the judge not only said this defamation suit has no weight, but said, you know, in the -- not the letter of the law but colloquially, the term "rape" does apply to the situation.
HARLOW: Yes.
WASHINGTON: I think that should matter to people --
HARLOW: Yes.
WASHINGTON: -- that a judge looked at the evidence and said, Don -- this is what happens.
HARLOW: Right. Because she said on our air, asked in her response, "Oh, yes, you did. Oh, yes, you did," about Trump referring to that. And a judge is saying, Yes, she can say that.
WASHINGTON: Yes. And I do think it maybe opens the water for everyone to talk about this more and to take it seriously, because this is not just something that is alleged at that point. A judge is saying this did happen.
HARLOW: Yes.
WASHINGTON: And it also opens the door for people like us to say that's what happened.
HARLOW: Thank you all very much, Jessica, John, Elie. Appreciate it.
BLACKWELL: Coming up, new CNN reporting this morning on Ukraine's counteroffensive: the sobering updates Western allies are receiving.
HARLOW: There's also a new warning from a top -- from top Fed officials that even more interest rate hikes could be on the way. We'll talk about that ahead.
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[06:21:25]
BLACKWELL: Overnight, two Russian missiles struck a city in Eastern Ukraine and killed seven people, injured more than 80 others. Officials say the missiles struck within 30 to 40 minutes of one another.
Now, among the injured, first responders and two children. The second missile landed as rescuers arrived to save people.
HARLOW: We also have this new CNN reporting this morning, and it reveals that Ukraine's Western allies are receiving increasingly sobering updates about Ukraine's counteroffensive, specifically about Ukrainian forces' ability to retake significant territory.
Our colleague, CNN anchor, chief national correspondent Jim Sciutto joins us now with his reporting. Jim, I was reading through your reporting this morning, and it's pretty startling and concerning.
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR/CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is. And it's a marked change from the optimism at the start at this counteroffensive some weeks ago, but weeks in, Ukrainian forces encountering real difficulty.
Russian forces have built and put up a -- really, a devastating defense there, so that as they look at the status of this war but also the chances for significant progress, Western officials receiving increasingly sobering assessments.
As one senior Western diplomat told me, "They're still going to see for the next couple weeks" -- this is describing the Ukrainian forces -- "if there is a chance of making some progress, but for them to really make progress that would change the balance of this conflict, I think it's extremely, highly unlikely."
And I was speaking to multiple officials briefed on the latest intelligence who were seeing the same picture here. A number of things: Russian defensive lines, three layers, tens of thousands of mines.
As they've been assaulting those lines, Ukrainian forces are incurring staggering, just staggering losses.
And in response to that, they have often pulled back some of their forces, becoming casualty-averse, understandably. And that has then limited their chances for making further progress going forward.
But there's also a bigger picture issue here: realizing that just a few weeks of training, eight weeks of training, in some cases, on some of these new weapons systems -- Western-supplied tanks, for instance -- is not enough to instantly create new, highly-capable mechanized units to successfully assault those Russian defensive lines.
Now, they still maintain hope that this could change, but it is a marked change, Poppy and Victor, from what I was hearing just a few weeks ago at the start of this counteroffensive.
BLACKWELL: So Jim, this sounds like it's not just about weapons support. That there's nothing that the West can give Ukrainian that will change this dramatically It's about so much more.
SCIUTTO: Well, no magic bullet, as it were, no single weapons system that's suddenly going to change the status of this.
And by the way, when you do provide those new systems, it takes time. For instance, the U.S. just approving sending Abrams tanks there now. But they're not going to get there until the fall. And they're still training up Ukrainian forces on those tanks.
So, the view is there's not one system that they could send tomorrow and fundamentally change the nature of this battle here. That this is shaping up to be a long, difficult slog, with heavy losses on both sides.
And time pressure, as well. Because as you get into the fall, the weather changes. Makes it more difficult to push forward. So, they're feeling time pressure to -- to make some ground, right, before then.
But I wouldn't say pessimistic is the view, but I would certainly say a sobering view of their chances.
BLACKWELL: All right. Jim Sciutto with the reporting. Thanks so much, Jim.
SCIUTTO: Thanks.
HARLOW: Yes, Jim, thank you.
An all-out brawl breaking out on a dock in Montgomery, Alabama. Look at that. Now multiple arrest warrants have been issued.
[06:25:02]
BLACKWELL: And how this car ended up wedged into the second floor of this house in Pennsylvania.
HARLOW: What?
BLACKWELL: That's ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLACKWELL: Later today, officials in Montgomery, Alabama, will hold a news conference to address what led to a wild brawl over the weekend at the city's waterfront. It happened Saturday evening when a black dock worker was trying to
get a pontoon boat moved so the city's river boat could dock, but there was this huge fight that ensued when white boaters assaulted that employee.
CNN's Ryan Young is following this story for us.
Ryan, this video and reactions to it have been all over social media. And now there are warrants issued for arrests.
RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's absolutely right. Of course, we have that 2 p.m. news conference to go through later on today.
But you think about it. We talked to a witness who stresses this man was trying to do his job when he was attacked.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
YOUNG (voice-over): An altercation on a Montgomery, Alabama, boat dock over the weekend between a group of white boaters and a black employee escalated into a massive brawl that resulted in multiple arrest warrants.
Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed is calling for justice to be served for attacking a man who was doing his job.
MAYOR STEVEN REED (D), MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA: It's an unfortunate incident. And it's something that we're investigating right now. We'll continue to go through that process before we take any additional steps.
YOUNG (voice-over): It all began when the black employee was trying to clear the dock.
[06:30:00]
