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President Biden Travels to Geneva to Meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin; President Biden Likely to Discuss Cybersecurity Concerns with Vladimir Putin; President Biden States NATO Considering Admitting Ukraine at Member; New Highly Contagious Variant of Coronavirus Discovered; Ex-Giuliani Associate Speaks on Damning New Audio, Radio, Barr's Role. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired June 15, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Tuesday, June 15th. And the Biden/Putin summit is just one day away, and right now President Biden is holding talks with America's closest E.U. allies. Before entering the meeting, he declared his commitment to rebuilding America's relationship with the E.U. and NATO.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Later today the president goes to Geneva for his highly anticipated face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin. That meeting is tomorrow. He says the United States is not looking for a confrontation with the Kremlin, and he acknowledged the Russian leader is a worthy adversary. You know how you know it's big? You know it's big if Wolf Blitzer is there. You know if he's not only there but sneaking into

our reads before we're ready to talk to him.

And joining us now is the anchor of THE SITUATION ROOM Wolf Blitzer, live in Geneva for this meeting. Wolf, what are you expecting? You've been at all of these summits. You were in Helsinki last time when President Trump met with Vladimir Putin. What are you expecting tomorrow?

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, it's going to be long. They're going to have hours and hours of conversations. The Russian officials are already saying maybe four or five hours of talks behind closed doors, obviously. We won't know what's going on. There will be supposedly separate news conferences immediately after this historic summit between Biden and Putin. I don't know if they're going to happen at the same time. The Russians say the Putin news conference will happen immediately after the conclusion of the talks. I don't know about President Biden, when he will have his news conference.

Is it possible they'll meet jointly? I suspect not. I suspect they're going to have separate news conferences, but you never know what can happen during the course of four, five hours of talks. Remember, when they say four, five hours of talks, there are Russian and English translators inside, so you have to divide that time, give the translators time to translate, if you will. But it's going to be detailed. They have a lot, a lot on their agenda.

And I must say this, John. This city is fabulous, Geneva. They couldn't have picked a more beautiful, historic place to have this kind of really important summit.

KEILAR: Yes, I've been jealous looking at the background behind you and of our correspondents who are there. Wolf, President Biden, I want to listen to what he said about his view of Vladimir Putin yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm going to make clear to President Putin that there are areas we can cooperate if he chooses. And if he chooses not to cooperate, and acts in a way that he has in the past, relative to cybersecurity and some other activities, then we will respond.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: I wonder what kind of stick is the U.S. prepared to wield here when it comes to Russia, which we've just seen over and over Putin really being kind of a fly in the ointment for America.

BLITZER: The fact is that President Biden will arrive here in Geneva with some strength given the fact he's had very productive meetings with the G7, with the NATO leaders, now the E.U. in Brussels. Deliberately they wanted to do that to give him some strength going into this summit with Putin.

He's making it clear, for example, talking about cybersecurity, cyberwarfare, this is a huge issue right now. They know that there are individuals, these organizations inside Russia that are causing a lot of damage in the United States. And the suspicion that a lot of us have, those of who have been briefed, is he's going to make it clear to Putin that if the Russians allow this to continue from inside Russia, the U.S. is going to respond. The U.S. has tremendous cyberwarfare capabilities. If they want to punish, hurt Russia, they certainly can.

The U.S. does not want to do that because if the U.S. does that, then Russia will retaliate. It will get even worse. The U.S. has a lot more to lose in the process of these kinds of battles. But the threat will be there. Putin will hear it, I suspect, in one form or another from the American president.

BERMAN: Wolf Blitzer in Geneva, we know you will be there for a special edition of THE SITUATION ROOM later today. Thank you so much for joining us. You'll be back with us tomorrow as this summit plays out before our very eyes. We look forward to seeing you then.

BLITZER: Thank you.

BERMAN: The president has been preparing extensively for this high- stakes summit in Geneva with Vladimir Putin. Joining me to discuss it more, CNN senior global affairs analyst Bianna Golodryga. And Bianna, I want to ask the same question I've been asking every day, especially as these two leaders continue to posture, is what would be a success for President Biden here?

[08:05:07]

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN SECURITY GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, the best way to have a successful meeting is to have zero expectations. So that's why the bar is so low going into this meeting. And there have been many -- I've been skeptical personally about whether this meeting should be happening right now and why not push it after the Duma elections, the parliamentary elections in Russia in September, because this is something that Putin is not wanting to just show the global world but show his audience and the constituents at home as well. And for Russia to view the U.S. as the bogeyman could continue to help him as he continued to clamp down on any sort of opposition within Russia.

That having been said, there's no concern going into this meeting as there was with President Trump about how he views Vladimir Putin and U.S.-Russia relations. And I think one of the most interesting comments that President Biden made yesterday was he said he has the full backing of all his NATO allies and as well as the G7 allies going into this meeting. They want this meeting to happen. They wouldn't have said that with Donald Trump. They did not know what Donald Trump would say to Vladimir Putin. They were concerned about that relationship. They were skeptical about that relationship. That doesn't seem to apply here, so they're going to go in. They're going to have many hours to discuss. They do know each other, and there are going to be many issues that they're going to be raising, cybersecurity being one of them, and U.S. hostages there and prisoners as well.

BERMAN: It occurs to me maybe I've been thinking about this the wrong way, maybe Vladimir Putin, his goal is just to be there. So he's getting everything he wants just by showing up.

GOLODRYGA: And he was invited there. Remember, this was the U.S.'s idea, not Russia's.

BERMAN: So he got what he wanted by the invitation. And President Biden is getting what he wants in the run up to the meeting itself. He's getting what he wants -- maybe. I'm throwing this out there as a question. Is he getting everything he wants as he works his way through Europe to Geneva to the meeting itself?

GOLODRYGA: The timing and choreography works in his favor. He met with allies. The alliance is strong. He set new trade agreements with E.U. countries. He has reaffirmed America's standing with our partners. Now it's time to meet with an adversary, right.

And I think for Russia, he wants to check that box off. Let's form some sort of neutrality, some stabilization in our relationship so he can focus more on China. The question is, is Putin going to play?

BERMAN: One area of, I guess, ambiguity is Ukraine still. I know you were interested in the fact that the president hadn't really discussed Ukraine that openly before yesterday when asked about it directly. And then he hedged. GOLODRYGA: Right.

BERMAN: And then hedged on whether or not Ukraine should be a NATO member, which is probably what Vladimir Putin wanted to hear.

GOLODRYGA: And Vladimir Putin was paying close attention to that as well, as was President Zelensky, who had been pushing the U.S. to support Ukraine entering the NATO alliance. And you had President Biden say it's not just up to me. A, there are other countries here that have to weigh in, and there's a lot of work Ukraine still has to do, first and foremost with corruption. That's something that we heard throughout the investigation during President Trump's era.

But I will say that this is something that perhaps President Biden doesn't want to put as a top priority right now with President Putin. They have many other issues to discuss. But he did make clear that the U.S. and NATO will support Ukraine's sovereignty.

The one thing that stands out to me as well, additionally, is that there was no, he's a killer, there was no tough talk, right. He's a worthy adversary. He's bright, as President Putin called Donald Trump once upon a time. But it's worth remembering that unlike President Biden, President Putin, who is smart, who is worldly, who is very, very experienced, has never debated somebody else. He has never run for reelection. So let's make sure that we know that these two, while they're going to be on the global stage together, come from very, very different backgrounds and perspectives.

BERMAN: Bianna Golodryga, thanks so much for being with us. We get the simultaneous translation which is also an added benefit.

GOLODRYGA: If only we could be in Geneva with that backdrop.

BERMAN: I know, Wolf bragging about the fact that he's in Geneva with that backdrop. Thanks so much.

Just ahead, harsh words for the Trump administration's handling of the pandemic. A former Biden COVID adviser joins us live.

KEILAR: Plus, Lev Parnas reacts for the first time to Rudy Giuliani's caught on tape phone call with Ukraine.

And the new FBI warning about QAnon, why so called digital soldiers could be gearing up for real-world violence.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:12:58]

BERMAN: Today the U.S. is expected to reach the milestone of 600,000 deaths in this pandemic, 600,000, which is a horrifying number. This comes as concerns are rising over the spread of a delta variant. The delta variant, which is a more transmissible variant of coronavirus first seen in India.

Joining us now is the former White House senior adviser for COVID-19 response Andy Slavitt. He is the author of a brand-new book out today, "Preventable, The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and selfishness doomed the U.S. coronavirus response."

Andy, let me just start with the news on the variant, this study which says it may be twice as likely to be spread, leads to double the hospitalizations. It's rising quickly in the U.K. and here in the United States. What is your major concern with this variant?

ANDY SLAVITT, WHITE HOUSE SENIOR ADVISER FOR COVID RESPONSE: Well, certainly we have a lot of concerns around the globe where we're not able to get vaccines quickly enough. The U.S. commitment that we announced last week of 500 million vials is going to help, but it's going to be a long time coming.

Here in the U.S., it's a better picture if you're vaccinated. So for those vaccinated, the vaccines are proving to be quite effective, even against the delta variant. So you have very little to worry about. If you're not vaccinated, the delta variant will spread in your community more quickly. It will take less exposure to get COVID-19. And so this is another reason to encourage people who haven't been vaccinated to strongly consider doing it.

BERMAN: What's going to happen with the large unvaccinated population in the United States over the next several months?

SLAVITT: Well, they clump together. So if you have more than -- roughly half of the population vaccinated, it's not as if half the people you know are vaccinated and half aren't. Either just about everybody you know is vaccinated or everybody you know isn't. In those communities where we have low vaccination rates, 40, 50, 55 percent, some even lower, they're going to be really subject to potential outbreaks.

[08:15:02]

And those outbreaks are not going to hopefully have quite the wildfire spread as we saw in 2020, but they're still going to impact those communities pretty strongly.

BERMAN: I want to ask you about your book because there's a lot in it that pertains to today. "Preventable" is the name of the book.

And you write about the Trump administration failures in its response and you quote a tweet that you yourself sent out well over a year ago that had to do with who the Trump administration was sending out to talk about this. And you say, quote: They need surrogates, I guess, because there's only so many ways to say it's okay for some people to die without looking like an asshole.

I'm sorry for swearing there, but the viewers get the point.

And I'm wondering what you mean by that and if you can elaborate, because there did seem to be an acceptance at some point for a certain level of death.

SLAVITT: Yeah, well, I do have a way with words, John. Thank you for noticing that.

The real, I think, sin here that we're talking about is the quashing of dissent. And we saw it early on in the -- as was revealed in the book, at one point in time, Alex Azar simply wanted to go out and say in February and say that things were good, which they really weren't, but could change quickly.

He got pulled from "Fox and Friends" and banished from doing any media for 45 days.

So, here we are in the middle of a crisis of public health and the Department of Health and Human Services isn't allowed to talk to the public or the press. And we saw that with, whether it's Deborah Messonnier (ph), Tony Fauci, if you weren't on Trump's script, you were going to be -- your voice was going to be squashed. His script was basically everything was okay and this was overblown.

And so when they went to find one of the things that the book references, I was on a call with Reince Priebus who's much said we have got to go find people from Harvard and Stanford who will say that everything is going okay. And that's when they found Scott Atlas.

BERMAN: And that's when thousands of people had already died, although not nearly as many have died now, 600,000.

Look, in the process of talking about your book, you told CBS over the weekend that Americans could have done a better job at sacrificing a little bit for one another. And that hit some people the wrong way, Andy, because we've been through a hell of a 14-months here and I think people are wondering, what more could I have sacrificed?

SLAVITT: And I want to explain that.

We as individuals, we as a country, people -- we've been through a lot. What I'm talking about actually is the structure of our society. What I mean by that is in some places, more than half, up to 70 percent of people were classified as essential workers for doing things that we could have protected them more.

So while many of us, we have -- there's a chapter of the book that's called "The room service pandemic", many people were getting deliveries. There were -- there were thousands and thousands of people, unseen, growing food crops, working in meat-packing plants, working in grocery stores. And we as a country decided that we were going to get many, many more people exposed without pay, without health care insurance, without support.

And so, we decided that the creature comforts, keeping the meat- packing plants open when they were unsafe, were more important than making sure we protected each other. And that's -- when I talk about sacrifice, really it's about the fact that we as a country could have put the lives of people higher on the list versus our own individual liberties.

BERMAN: Well, putting the lives -- putting the value of people's lives higher on the list rather than individual liberties, also it might in retrospect have meant allowing them more opportunities for social outreach, albeit safely.

I mean, I'm looking at the new statistic out from the CDC on suicide attempts among teenage girls. Up 51 percent compared to the year before the pandemic.

SLAVITT: That's right. Well, you know, when people talked -- Trump talked about the cost being too high of the pandemic, he would point to things like suicide and point to things like mental health. Yet he never proposed a solution. He never proposed a dollar.

When he talked about kids missing school, he doesn't talk about anything to make them safer.

So, it was all rhetoric. We had a massive mental health crisis before the pandemic. It got worse during the pandemic and it was nothing -- when Trump said it, mental health advocates would get excited and say, great, maybe he's going to do something about it. But all it was a reason not to attack the problem at its core.

And we need to do something about mental health. That wasn't what the president was saying.

BERMAN: You have a whole chapter in your book calling out basically certain television networks for spreading lies or at least propaganda or at least not helping as much as you would have liked during the pandemic.

[08:20:04]

What do you mean?

SLAVITT: Well, look, I mean, one of the things that has happened in our country and it didn't just happen with the pandemic is that we have -- we have this opportunity to get power through our division, or some people do. And Trump himself took something that itself was an uncomfortable thing, wearing a mask, was uncomfortable but minor. You talk about that as a potential sacrifice and said to people, this is not a sacrifice you need to make.

And it became even more than just a public health statement. It became a statement about your identity. And it became very tribal.

And so, I think everybody who was on one side -- you had to jump on the one side of the line or the other. When in most countries, who struggled with the pandemic just like we did, there were no sides. Everybody struggled. It was hard. But people were not feeling like they were two teams.

Here in the U.S., whether it was media or whether it was politics, Trump tried to turn this into something which pitted us against one another and that ultimately hurt us.

BERMAN: Yeah, the only teams are everyone against the pandemic, everyone against the coronavirus.

SLAVITT: Exactly. BERMAN: That's what it should have been.

Andy Slavitt, the book is "Preventable." It's a wonderful read. I have to say. Whatever anyone's politics also, you helped a lot of people get shots over the last several months. So thank you for that work, well beyond politics. Appreciate it, Andy.

SLAVITT: Thank you. Thank you, John.

BERMAN: Up next, indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas joins us live. What he says about the damning new audio from Trump's former attorney.

KEILAR: And the story first reported here on CNN, the FBI's new warning about QAnon's so-called digital soldiers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:25:46]

KEILAR: New audio obtained by CNN appears to back up an allegation made by Lev Parnas, the former associate of Rudy Giuliani's. Parnas was arrested in October of 2019, and he described himself then as Rudy Giuliani's right-hand man, telling stories about trips to Europe where he and Giuliani held meetings with Ukrainian officials.

They reportedly urged Ukraine's leaders to handle investigations into then-candidate Joe Biden, investigations that were pushed by the Trump White House. And in one of those calls from July of 2019, Giuliani can be heard saying this to a Ukrainian official.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER TRUMP PERSONAL ATTORNEY: If he could say something like that, on his own, in conversation, it would go a long way -- it would go a long way with the president to solve the problems.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, Lev Parnas is facing charges, including campaign finance violations and he is set to go on trial later this year.

And Lev Parnas is now joining us, along with his attorney, Joseph Bondy.

Gentlemen, thank you so much to both of you for being with us this morning.

I do want to get to this legal case here in a second, but first, Mr. Parnas, we'd like to ask you about a few other items. We've finally -- you finally heard this audio from this July 2019 call between Rudy Giuliani, Kurt Volker who is a U.S. diplomat, and Andre Yermak, a senior adviser -- top adviser to Ukraine's president.

What is your reaction, Mr. Parnes, hearing that audio? LEV PARNAS, INDICTED GIULIANI ASSOCIATE: Good morning, Brianna. Thank

you for having me.

It doesn't surprise me. I heard him live so many times -- I mean, over the year and a half that Rudy was on or maybe even a little longer. That's all that, you know, we heard and that's all we wanted is to get an announcement from the Zelensky administration. And even that, prior to that, even the Poroshenko administration to announce some sort of investigation into the then-candidate Joe Biden.

KEILAR: Is this helpful to you, this audio, hearing Rudy Giuliani in his own words?

PARNAS: I mean, it's great validation. It's similar to, if you remember, a little over a year ago, when then -- the impeachment of Donald Trump, we had Devin Nunes sit as the House Judiciary Committee chair presiding over the impeachment, denying that he knows me, trying to discredit and not have me testify, and then having Congress, all of a sudden, bring out the records that he did have a conversation with me.

So it's vindication. It's validation and really, you know, makes me feel good that now, the truth is finally coming out because there's a lot more to the story than just this tape.

KEILAR: You were instrumental in the ouster of U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. It is reported that you were on tape telling Trump that she needed to go because she was standing in the way of this Ukrainian investigations into digging dirt up on the Biden family.

I wonder if you regret what happened to her. This is a career diplomat who was essentially chased out of Ukraine. Do you regret that?

PARNAS: Absolutely. First of all, I just want to clear up a little bit. The tape where I'm having dinner with the president and we're discussing where that -- you hear the recording of me saying to get rid of the ambassador and him saying get rid of her now, that was prior to ever anything to do with the ambassador. That was literally just talk we were having and we just -- literally -- and I'm not one that believes in coincidences but unfortunately, that was like a huge coincidence that at the time, there was my partner, Igor, he was telling me there was conversation about the ambassador bad mouthing Trump.

And when we were having dinner with him and the conversation came up, that's something that was just like -- that came at the tip of my tongue at the time of the meeting. Now fast forward it, you know, a year -- a little bit over a year later and once me and Giuliani and my relationship, really -- you know, we got really close and I kind of became, you know, inducted into their team to help with this Ukraine situation.

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