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U.S. Conducts Strikes Against Underwater Houthi Vessel; Russian Oil Industry Booms Despite War, Sanctions; Financial Advice Columnist: I Was Scammed Out Of $50,000. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired February 19, 2024 - 07:30   ET

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

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[07:33:27]

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DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Our court system is a mess. What's happening in our country, they have to straighten it out. All you see is bitterness, and revenge, and hatred. And these repulsive abuses of power are not just an attack on me; they're really an attack on you and all Americans. It's a disgusting -- it's a disgusting thing.

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JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, you and all Americans don't owe more than $400 million right now. Donald Trump does. And that sounded like a guy who was angry over the ruling from a New York judge -- the biggest financial penalty to date facing Donald Trump -- $355 million. That's on top of the $83 million for defamation. Trump was found liable for fraud, conspiracy, and issuing false statements of business records.

The ruling wrapped up a chaotic week for Trump who saw several of his legal battles collide over a 48-hour period.

So where is it all headed next? Here now, CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig. Elie, like I said, a big verdict. A big price tag. What happens next there?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY, SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK, FORMER FEDERAL AND NEW JERSEY STATE PROSECUTOR: Yeah, John, we didn't need a crystal ball to see that there was going to be a substantial verdict but, boy oh boy, this one came down.

If you total up, Donald Trump got hit with a $350 million-plus verdict, plus smaller verdicts for his children. If you add interest on there it gets over $400 million. We're talking about an enormous number.

Also important to note the judge could have revoked the business certificates, which essentially would have been the corporate death penalty. But instead, the judge chose to essentially enter the company into corporate rehab of a sort.

[07:35:00]

So first of all, there will be industry suspensions. Donald Trump cannot be an officer of any company in New York for three years. His sons, for two years. And there will be internal controls and an internal monitor keeping an eye on the finances. The goal here of the judge is to try to clean up the Trump Organization.

Now, as to what happens next. First, Donald Trump will have to post a bond. He's not going to have to post $350 million-plus in cash. If the parties can work out an agreement that should do it. If not, the judge will come in say. There usually has to be some substantial case component. But Donald Trump can also probably post the deeds -- the rights to certain buildings in order to satisfy that bond.

Once he posts the bond, then he will have the right to appeal. He automatically will have the right to one appeal -- to the mid-level New York Appeals Court. And then maybe, he can try to the highest level New York State Court. But he will have his right to appeal. At the end though, whatever number comes out of that appeal -- that's not negotiable. He will have to pay that amount.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Elie, in the meantime, down in Georgia, Fulton County had Fani Willis basically trying to overcome the threat to her being taken off the fake electors case down there. Can you tell us where things stand?

HONIG: Yeah. So, remarkable hearings last week -- unforgettable hearings when the D.A. herself took the stand. These hearings will continue today to determine whether the D.A. has a financial conflict of interest. That's really the key point there.

There will be more hearings starting tomorrow. Now, these, we're not going to see on TV. These are going to be behind closed doors because the judge is going to have to get into some privilege issues that could impact the ultimate decision here.

And then we may get a ruling later this week. The judge may want further briefing. He's really left that sort of open.

The ultimate potential issue here is will the D.A. be disqualified. Is there a concrete financial conflict of interest in this case? If the D.A. is disqualified the entire D.A.'s office is off the case. The case will then go into a sort of purgatory from which it may not recover.

I don't think -- based on my opinion from having seen this is I don't see the concrete conflict of interest just yet. But keep in mind there's things happening behind closed doors with the judge that we're not privy to. So we'll have to see how that one comes out.

BERMAN: It's a measure of how much is going on, Elie, that you and I were on TV covering the first two things --

HONIG: Yes. BERMAN: -- you're talking about right there live when this next piece of information broke, which is an actual trial date for the New York criminal case -- March 25. This thing's on.

HONIG: This, to me, is perhaps the biggest single story to emerge from last week's hearings -- the Stormy Daniels hush money payment. This is the first criminal case against Donald Trump. We now have a trial date. Circle it in pen on your calendars -- March 25. That is 35 days from today.

This date is on. It had been set for a long time. They had a hearing last week and the judge said we are going. We are starting to choose our jury on March 25. That will be the first criminal trial right here in Manhattan. And it seems like that is actually really happening.

CORNISH: OK. So, civil settlement, criminal trial date, Georgia case still waiting.

BERMAN: You're running out of appearances.

CORNISH: No, no. Now, but the highest court in the land, Supreme Court. What's still sort of percolating in that?

HONIG: Yeah. As if this all wasn't enough, we have two huge issues that we're waiting to hear from the Supreme Court.

First of all, we will, at some point, get a ruling on the 14th Amendment challenge to disqualify Donald Trump from the ballot in Colorado. We don't know for sure but the court has scheduled an opinions day for Wednesday morning. So that could be -- we don't know -- that could be one of the opinions they issue.

And then, perhaps even bigger, will the court take up the presidential immunity question? And this relates to Jack Smith's DOJ federal January 6 case. Again, we don't know, but the court is going to issue orders and that's how they're going to tell us -- orders tomorrow -- Tuesday morning. Again, we don't know but keep an eye on maybe this one on Tuesday and maybe the 14th Amendment on Wednesday.

There's everything, guys.

BERMAN: That's a tease right there.

CORNISH: I know.

BERMAN: To analyze it --

CORNISH: That's why you need a whole wall for this.

HONIG: Yeah. You have to have the visuals.

BERMAN: You have, like, six walls --

CORNISH: A lot of information, yes.

BERMAN: -- there's so much going on. We have Elie running around the studio.

All right. Overnight, U.S. Central Command confirming strikes against an underwater Houthi rebel vessel. We have the details next.

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[07:47:53]

CORNISH: Houthis are deploying a potential deadly new strategy for their attacks against ships in the Red Sea. The U.S. confirming it just conducted five strikes against the rebel group -- one of them targeting an undermanned, underwater vessel. This is for the first time.

CNN's Katie Bo Lillis is live from Washington. And Kate, this sounds very unusual, right? This is the first underwater vessel attack. Is this a new full-on strategy?

KATIE BO LILLIS, CNN REPORTER: Yeah. So, Audie, the U.S. military carrying out five strikes in -- against targets in Houthi-held territory on Saturday, including three anti-ship cruise missiles, one drone boat which they have seen before, and one underwater drone. Essentially, a submarine drone.

Now, the U.S. military saying that this is the first time that they have seen the Houthis employ one of these underwater drones since they -- the group first started launching attacks against commercial shipping and U.S. military ships in the region in October.

But at this point, we don't have a whole lot of details. We don't know how the United States was able to identify this target. We don't know how many of these systems the Houthis may have or where they are obtaining from -- or also, how significant of a risk they might pose to both U.S. forces and commercial shipping in the region. Presumably, an underwater drone would be more difficult to detect and destroy.

So this may be a shift in Houthi strategy because they have yet to be successful in striking a U.S. Navy vessel.

Now, the Houthis -- this Iran-backed militant group that controls large sections of territory in Yemen has been carrying out dozens of attacks against commercial shipping and American vessels since the onset of hostilities in Gaza in October in what the group says is solidarity with the Palestinian cause. But they have yet to be successful in striking an American Navy vessel even though they have had some close calls. The question is does this system get them any closer to that?

BERMAN: Yeah, and how are they now responding to this latest U.S. action?

LILLIS: Yeah. So that is the sort of million-dollar question, John, is will the Houthis be deterred from conducting further attacks? Right now, the answer to that appears to be, at best, unanswered. The group -- the pace of attacks that this group has carried out has not slowed since the U.S. began conducting retaliatory strikes. And they have now done a series of this kind of retaliatory strike -- what we saw on Saturday -- is of a piece with other U.S. strikes, including one just on Friday against Houthi assets.

[07:45:09]

The group has said that it has no intention of stopping this -- these attacks on shipping until Israel is out of Gaza.

BERMAN: All right, Katie Bo Lillis. Thank you so much for that reporting. We'll check back in with you shortly.

A Senate bill that would provide billions in aid to Ukraine is being held up in the Republican-controlled House, and the White House is blaming that lack of funding for the fall of a key Ukrainian city. Meanwhile, Russia is richer than ever before.

Our Nick Paton Walsh explains why.

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NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Blue, tranquil -- a world away from Ukraine's front lines. We headed out to where Russia may be filling its war chest to a record high. Crude oil tankers sometimes engaged in opaque, secretive transfers. These two under sanctions-busting suspicions in the past. The big one from Russia's Black Sea coast, transferring crude to the smaller one, which also came from Russia.

WALSH: And out here you get a feeling of how hard it is to keep track of all of this. Just transfers occurring out here in the blue expanse. Massive trade of billions of dollars of oil, some of which ends up helping the Kremlin fund its war.

WALSH (voice-over): Tens of millions of barrels of crude likely transferred like this last year -- and where it ends up, often unclear, which is the point.

AMI DANIEL, CEO, WINDWARD: That's probably above 60 million barrels that are being transferred in the middle of the ocean, purposefully. So you really needed to have a reason because it's much easier now to do that.

WALSH (voice-over): "These two have a messy past," said the shipping monitor that led us to them.

DAVID TANNENBAUM, POLE STAR GLOBAL: The larger tanker that you guys saw was actually owned by a large company that bought a lot of these tankers when Russian sanctions came out, right? And so they've been heavily associated with what we call the Dark Fleet, which is these tankers that are servicing Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and other sort of sanctions concerns.

So the smaller one actually has an interesting history itself. It was once owned by a sanctioned person.

WALSH (voice-over): Russia is richer than ever before. Last year's budget was $320 billion, about a third of which it spent on its invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions were meant to dent oil paying for war. But instead, India has stepped in and is now buying 13 times more Russian crude oil than before the war, worth $37 billion last year, says one estimate exclusively given to CNN. India buying Russian crude isn't sanctioned but it's buying so much Russia might need to dodge some sanctions to ship it all.

We asked an artificial intelligence firm, Windward, to analyze all global shipping last year for direct shipments between Russia and India, and they found a huge 588.

A separate analysis by Pole Star Global, for CNN, revealed over 200 other ships that left Russia last year and did a ship-to-ship transfer off the Greek coast to another boat that then went on to India.

TANNENBAUM: Ship-to-ship transfers are done legally but they're also used as an illicit tactic to evade sanctions -- to sort of try and confuse authorities as to where this oil is coming from and who is buying it at the end of the day.

WALSH (voice-over): India says these shipments fuel its economy without raising global prices by competing with the West for Middle Eastern oil. But there's a complication for the West here as India refines the oil and sells those products on.

And the biggest buyer of products from Russian crude last year, according to exclusive new data obtained by CNN, the United States -- over $1 billion from India and way more if you add what U.S. allies also imposing sanctions on Russia also report.

ISSAC LEVI, CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON ENERGY AND CLEAN AIR: So we've seen an increase in 2023 of 44 percent of oil products are being made from Russian crude oil flowing into those countries that impose sanctions on Russia, such as the U.S., the U.K., and EU.

WALSH (voice-over): But Russia is even on the make from the refining. This Indian port and refinery, Vadinar, sent an estimated $50 million of refined products to the U.S. last year. And guess who owns nearly half of it? Rosneft, the Russian state oil giant enriching the Kremlin. Putin earning money on the crude and probably the shipping, but also the refining and the resale.

DANIEL: Really, you're talking about something which is amazingly lucrative, and therefore, the temptation to do that as a person or as a company is absolutely huge for the traders. And they could just make 10, 20, 30, 40 million within four or five months. I'm not sure there's any other opportunity in the world to do that -- and if there is, please let me know what.

[07:50:11]

WALSH (voice-over): An opaque chain of billions risking Moscow having unlimited funds for its wars.

Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, London.

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CORNISH: Alexey Navalny's mother and lawyers say they were denied access to the morgue where his body is allegedly being held. CNN is live in Moscow with the very latest on the international fallout.

BERMAN: Plus, how did a successful financial advice columnist get scammed out of $50,000 in cash? She is here to tell the story.

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[07:55:00]

BERMAN: "I never thought I was the kind of person to fall for a scam." That's the words of a financial advice columnist that went viral last week for a piece titled "The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger."

New York magazine's Charlotte Cowles recounts that one Halloween she got a call from crooks spinning this elaborate and fictional tale, and it worked.

CORNISH: Here's what happened.

First, a caller posing as an Amazon employee told her she was a victim of identity fraud. Then another scammer impersonated the Federal Trade Commission who said 22 bank accounts, nine vehicles, and four properties were allegedly registered in her name. And then finally, someone claiming to be a CIA investigator convinced her to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars from her bank account and hand it to them for safekeeping.

BERMAN: Financial columnist for New York magazine's The Cut, Charlotte Cowles, joins us now with more on her story. I mean, this is incredible and I think it had to be really hard for you to come forward and tell this story. Why did you decide to do it?

CHARLOTTE COWLES, FINANCIAL COLUMNIST, NEW YORK MAGAZINE, COLUMNIST, THE CUT: It is deeply embarrassing. And I wanted to tell this story because there really is no stereotypical scam victim and I know this from my own personal experience, obviously.

But also, the hundreds of emails that I have received from other people since this story came out -- other financial professionals. They are doctors. They are lawyers. They are government employees. There are people of all walks of life who this happens to. And this is also backed up by data and research that's done on scam victims. There really is no one type of person who is vulnerable.

CORNISH: You wrote that several friends felt strongly that if the scammers hadn't mentioned your son, right -- kind of talking about your family in the context of this -- that you would not have fallen for it. In hindsight, is there a moment you think you would have changed?

COWLES: Oh, there's so many moments. But I think that these scammers are really good at what they do. That's the reason they keep doing it is that it works.

CORNISH: We should say you were kind of passed off in multiple phone calls.

COWLES: Yeah.

CORNISH: It's not like you just got an email --

COWLES: No.

CORNISH: -- and replied back with a box of cash.

COWLES: No, no. They didn't come out of the gate and ask for money. It unfolded very gradually and incrementally over five hours on the phone. And I think that what these people do is they're very good at targeting people and figuring out their one specific vulnerability -- everyone has one, at least -- and then exploiting that.

And for me, it was my family. And they had very intimate details about me, about my family members. They knew where I lived. They knew the last four digits of my Social Security number. They knew about my son and it was terrifying.

BERMAN: It's just dastardly.

COWLES: Yeah.

BERMAN: I mean, it really is just the lowest of low. I mean, was there anywhere where your radar went off? Was there a moment where you're like this doesn't feel right?

COWLES: Oh, absolutely. I mean, the whole time none of it felt right. But the tiny chance that what they were saying was actually true was terrifying enough that I was willing to cooperate. And the things that they were threatening were so terrifying that that tiny voice that says what if they're right -- that was enough to make me listen and stay on the phone with them.

CORNISH: One of the things that struck me about this story is the isolation of it when it's happening to you and also afterwards. We are hearing about, like, sextortion with teen boys. We're hearing about all kinds of other scams that really seem to point to people feeling like they had nowhere to turn.

You are married. You had a family. Can you talk about that instinct to not reach out for help?

COWLES: Absolutely. There's actually a name for this. It's called 'blocking the exits.' And it's a really effective manipulation tactic. And --

CORNISH: Where they make it seem like you can't contact this person.

COWLES: Yeah.

CORNISH: Don't. COWLES: Don't. You're under surveillance. You're being watched. Your

phone is tapped. Your computer has been hacked. They really make it seem like you have nowhere to turn.

In this particular instance, I was also home by myself. I was working from home. And so, under any other circumstances, of course -- I mean, my best friend is a lawyer. Like, I have -- I have an incredible support system around me and they really made me feel like I couldn't talk to anyone.

BERMAN: That support that you -- it makes me -- it's just -- oh, just so uncomfortable. You're home alone.

COWLES: Yeah.

BERMAN: Just how awful you must have felt the whole time.

CORNISH: After your story, I emailed my family and said no matter what happens, you can tell me.

COWLES: Yeah.

BERMAN: So help us through this. I mean, what does everyone who's watching this need to know that they have to do if they start going down a road like this?

COWLES: Yeah, absolutely.

So I think the first thing is that you can never really prepare for how you're going to react when someone threatens your family. So everyone thinks that they're -- you know, they would never fall for something like this. I thought that I would never fall for something like this.

So the best way that you can prepare is to think of a couple of people.