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Maxar Technologies Satellites Have Revealed Russian Carrier Ships Stealing Ukraine Grain; Maxar Is Now Giving Imagery To The Ukrainian Government, Part Of The U.S. Aide For Ukraine; Beijing Claiming Biden's Comments On Taiwan Is Breaking The Promise Of The One-Chinese Principle; Republican Senate Race In Pennsylvania Is Still Neck-And-Neck; Johnny Depp's Ex-girlfriend Kate Moss Set To Testify At His Defamation Case Against Amber Heard. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired May 24, 2022 - 7:30   ET

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

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: There are new satellite images that appear to show Russia stepping up its efforts to steal Ukraine's grain. These are photos that show Russian carrier ships docking near grain silos in the Crimean Port of Sevastopol. And they're loading up what is believed to be stolen grain.

So, let's bring in Alex Marquardt with this CNN exclusive. Tell us about this, Alex.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well Brianna, this is more of what is being called a weaponization of Ukraine's food supply. We obtained these new images that appear to show the continued theft by Russia of Ukrainian grain. Loading it up onto these ships and then setting out to sea.

Now, we got these images from Maxar Technologies, which also gave us an exclusive tour of their satellite production facility. Maxar along with other companies has been uncovering some of the most tragic and dramatic events of this war.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUARDT (voice-over): These new satellite images show what appears to be the ramping up of theft by Russia of Ukrainian grain being poured into the open hold of a Russian ship.

This was in the Crimean port of Sevastopol on May 19. Then two days later a second ship docks and it too is filled. Now, both Russian ships are sailing away.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE: Ukraine's grain (ph).

MARQUARDT (voice-over): This weekend President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of fueling a food crisis and of gradually stealing Ukraine's food supplies and trying to sell them.

An earlier image from Maxar Technologies shows one of those same Russian ships in a port of their close ally, Syria. The Ukrainian grain waiting to be unloaded onto trucks.

These extraordinary revealing images are so close and so clear that they look like they could be taken by drone or helicopter.

STEPHEN WOOD, SENIOR DIRECTOR MAX TECHNOLOGIES: You can actually see the grain pouring into the open hole on the ship.

MARQUARDT (voice-over): Stephen Wood and his team at Maxar spotted the ships in this much wider image of Crimea.

WOOD: This is 400 miles up in space. To be able to see that kind of level of detail, the ships, the cab of the truck, pretty phenomenal stuff.

MARQUARDT (voice-over): Maxar and other commercial satellite companies have played a critical role in what we know about Russia's war in Ukraine, with satellite imagery that is unprecedented, both in quality and how it's being used.

WOOD: Before this was only available in the halls of the CIA or the U.S. government or friendly foreign governments to now we're showing it on CNN.

[07:35:05]

MARQUARDT: We're keeping a very close eye on that column of Russian vehicles, that convoy we've been talking about for several days.

MARQUARDT (voice-over): They alerted the world to the famous 40-mile- long Russian convoy outside Kyiv. The rows of hundreds of mass graves near Mariupol, Potential war crimes in Bucha and the aftermath of the Russian bombing of the Mariupol Theater.

DANIEL JABLONSKY, CEO MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES: This satellite is in the final stages of getting ready to be shipped very soon.

MARQUARDT (voice-over): We were given a rare tour of Maxar Satellite factory in Palo Alto, California, by CEO Dan Jablonsky. Joint projects with NASA and others, construction underway on six new Maxar satellites, which will allow them to scan a single spot on earth 15 times a day.

For decades Maxar has provided all kinds of images to both private clients and to the U.S. government, their biggest customer.

MARQUARDT: How much does the U.S. government tell you where to look?

JABLONSKY: They tell us where to point the satellites and take the imagery and then that's what we feed into them as a service. The same way we do -- we would do for Google Maps, for example.

MARQUARDT: Will the intelligence community, for example, say we know that there is a war crime that has been committed. There are all of these mass graves, for example. Train your satellites there and then push out those images to the press?

JABLONSKY: They actually -- they might ask us to make those collections, but they don't -- they do not influence or ask us to necessarily put out -- put out what we're putting out to the public.

MARQUARDT (voice-over): Maxar is now giving imagery to the Ukrainian government, part of the U.S. aide for Ukraine. In a fight, the U.S. and others now say that has resulted in Russian war crimes.

MARQUARDT: To what extent are your images going to be critical in these war crimes investigations?

WOOD: For example, the bodies that were found on the street in Bucha. We had imagery correlating at the exact same time where these bodies were, down to the place, the time and the moment. It's having that kind of fidelity of data that we now have that makes that possible.

And I -- I ultimately think it will play an important part.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUARDT: Now, each one of those Russian ships that we showed you there in that new satellite imagery has a capacity of 30,000 tons. So, 30,000 tons of grain in each ship that is sailing away. Granted, of course, Russia does deny that they're stealing this grain. But what they are not taking they are targeting and blocking from leaving Ukraine now.

So, of course, this is devastating for Ukraine, for the Ukrainian economy, but for the world as well, which is so reliant on food from Ukraine. At least now, thanks to companies like Maxar, we're able to see it happening essentially in real-time.

KEILAR: Yes, they can deny all they want, but we have eyes and we're seeing it because of these pictures. Alex, great reporting. Thank you so much.

MARQUARDT: Yes.

KEILAR: Berman?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Beijing is firing back this morning in response to President Biden's comments on Taiwan, claiming the U.S. has broken its promise on the one-China principle. So, what is that principle.

John Avlon with a Reality Check.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: While meeting with Asian allies overseas President Joe Biden committed a classic Washington gaff. He told the truth.

In the process he violated a long-standing legal fiction, which has been distorting U.S. foreign policy for decades. I'm talking about the intentionally opaque strategy known as one-China, which employs strategic ambiguity and has been embraced by presidents of both parties.

But you see, Joe Biden doesn't really do strategic ambiguity and his sin was answering this question directly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Yes. The idea that -- that it can be taken by force -- just taken by force is just not -- is just not appropriate (ph). It will dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in -- in -- in Ukraine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: So the diplomats may be scrambling for a clean-up on aisle Biden, but the principle's pretty clear, especially after Putin's invasion of Ukraine. This isn't saber rattling, it's an American president saying it's time that we all stop pretending in the Pacific.

Now you're probably wondering how we ended up with this absurd diplomatic dance. So, here's the deal. So, Taiwan is a self-governing island, home to more than 23 million people and officially known as the Republic of China. The Chinese mainland, plus Hong Kong and Macau are home to 1.4 billion people and known as the People's Republic of China.

So, there just be traces back to the Chinese Civil War, with communist forces taking the mainland in 1949 and China's defeating government fleeing to Taiwan. Both sides still formally insist there's only one China, with each claiming all their territory is rightfully theirs.

But you see, this kind of proved useful when President Nixon began to open up relations with China despite his anti-communist credentials. His National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger came up with an artful compromise.

We would agree that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one-China and that Taiwan is part of China, without ever explicitly saying whose version of reality we backed.

[07:40:07]

This was the beginning of one-China policy based in strategic ambiguity. But as the People's Republic rose Taiwan was downgraded with the United Nations booting the island from its ranks in 1971 in favor of seating a country with one-fifth of the earth's population.

In 1979 the Carter administration officially dropped diplomatic recognition of Taiwan in favor of the People's Republic. But, that same year the War Hawks in Congress backed defensive arms sales to Taiwan and a few years later the Reagan administrations secretly assured Taiwan that we would continue to sell it arms for self- defense.

In recent years, tensions between Beijing and Taipei have ratcheted up, with mainland China insisting others support its claim to the island, pressuring countries and companies alike to accept the idea that Taiwan doesn't really exist, in order to keep the PRC happy and open for business.

Now, this can have absurd results, like disappearing the island from airline maps. Well, the Olympics, Taiwan's required to compete under an assumed name and its flag and anthem are banned. It's a reminder that what's done under the name of real politic sometimes have anything to do with reality, except the reality of power.

And that's the principle that Biden's repeatedly pierced. By some counts it's the third time this president said that America would defend Taiwan. Now, he's departing from the official script, but he's saying what's on his mind.

Now, critics say that Biden's statement is provocation, that he's risking war by poking the panda, as it were. Others say that Biden's new clarity is a way of keeping the peace by avoiding any misunderstanding.

The real problem is that misunderstanding has always been at the heart of strategic ambiguity than to shoot from the lip (ph) way Biden saying that we need to stop basing policy on legal fictions that forces to contort our language and dignify lies. Instead we need to speak honestly from a set of common facts and not tiptoe around basic truths for fear of offending powerful people. It's a reminder that we're always better off when we deal with reality.

And that's your Reality Check.

BERMAN: I mean, confusion hasn't been a bug it's the feature --

AVLON: Yes.

BERMAN: -- of this diplomatic position the U.S. has been a part of for so long.

AVLON: That's exactly right. But we tie ourselves up in knots over all these lies. So, enough with the fictions.

BERMAN: John Avlon, thank you very much.

The Republican Senate race in Pennsylvania still neck-in-neck one week after Election Day. A legal battle now over mail-in ballots.

KEILAR: And in Georgia, David Perdue ending his primary campaign for governor with this remark about Democrat Stacey Abrams.

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DAVID PERDUE (R), CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA: Hey, she ain't from here. Let her go back where she came from. She doesn't like it here. (END VIDEO CLIP)

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BERMAN: So today is the deadline for counties to report the vote counts in Pennsylvania's Republican Senate race. The lead held by Mehmet Oz over Dave McCormick, you can see it has narrowed to fewer than 1,000 votes. So, if this final margin lands within a half a percent or less it will trigger an automatic recount, that's almost a definite at this point.

Joining me now is Pennsylvania's Deputy Secretary for Elections and Commissions Jonathan Marks. Thank you so much for being with us. Can you tell us at this point how many votes are left to be counted?

JONATHAN MARKS, PENNSYLVANIA DEPUTY SECRETARY OF ELECTIONS AND COMMISSIONS: Well, thank you for having me. So, right now we have a few thousand votes that remain to be counted. Those are primarily military vote -- ballots from military and overseas civilian voters.

Those ballots can actually still be received on through 5:00 pm today and the counties will canvas them tomorrow. Right now the counties are in the midst of their official canvas. They'll be reporting updated unofficial returns, as you said, to us by 5:00 pm today. Then we'll take the next step in this process.

BERMAN: A few thousand votes? Are we talking 2,000 or 3,000 or closer to 10,000?

MARKS: It -- it's actually -- on the Republican side it's definitely just a few thousand votes based on the information we've obtained from the counties. We'll have a clearer picture of that by 5:00 pm today, after counties report to us the unofficial returns. Along with an accounting of exactly how many outstanding provisional ballots, outstanding absentee and mail-in ballots that they have.

BERMAN: All right, can you explain to us exactly what the issue is with the mail-in ballots? Dave McCormick is suing to require that ballots that do not have the date written on the envelope should be counted. Explain exactly what the Pennsylvania law is.

MARKS: Well, Pennsylvania law provides that voters have to -- have to both sign and date the declaration envelops. As you noted, there is litigation going on right now. I'm not going to comment on the active litigation, but -- you know -- and our goal here at the department and the county's goal is to make sure every vote is counted and we'll work with counties, you know, whatever the courts decide in that litigation we'll work with the counties to make sure that they -- you know -- that they carry out the court's order.

BERMAN: Just so people understand, you -- you're supposed to write the date on the envelope, but it has nothing to do with when the ballots are sent or received. We're only talking about ballots that are postmarked by the appropriate time and received by the appropriate time regardless of whether the date is written on the envelope, correct?

MARKS: I want to clarify one thing. It's not postmarked, they have to be received by 8:00 pm on Election Day. So yes, as long as they're received by 8:00 pm on Election Day they can be counted. And that's really the crux of the argument right now and that's what the court is dealing with is, is the date that the voter inserts on the outer envelop material in determining whether the vote should be cast or not.

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The courts are going to decide. As I said, we're going to provide the countries with guidance and we'll work with them to make sure they carry out whatever the court's ruling is in the end.

BERMAN: And just so people understand, Dave McCormick is suing to have those ballots counted after the Pennsylvania Republican Party and now I believe the RNC are coming down on the other side and saying unless the date is written in they should not be counted. And you are waiting for guidance for guidance from the courts before you tell counties what they should do, correct?

MARKS: We will be offering. We've already reached out to the counties, we made them aware of the ruling in the district court that occurred on Friday. And, you know, what we've asked them to do is segregate those ballots, those undated ballots and await further instruction from us. We're having those discussions internally with our own counsel and will be providing counties with guidance as appropriate.

And, you know, in the end what we're going to have is an accurate count, you know, whether there's a statewide recount or whatever happens we're going to have an accurate count and voters in Pennsylvania can rest assured that their voice is going to be heard.

BERMAN: That is what's important. Jonathan Marks, appreciate your clarifications. Thank you for joining us this morning.

MARKS: Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you.

BERMAN: All right, during an interview with Congressman Mike McCaul of Texas on "New Day" yesterday, he claimed that a Chinese delegation refused to stand up and clap for Ukrainian President Zelenskyy after a speech at Davos.

CNN has confirmed that the delegation was not from China. We do regret that the error appeared on our air. We have reached out to McCaul's office for a statement.

And ex of Johnny Depp expected to take the stand in the actor's defamation trial against his other ex Amber Heard.

KEILAR: Plus, the tensions between Donald Trump and Mike Pence get uglier as voters in Georgia chose between their candidates today. [07:53:15]

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KEILAR: This morning new highly anticipated testimony expected in Johnny Depp's $50 million defamation case against his ex-wife actress Amber Heard. Depp's legal team is set to call his ex-girlfriend, supermodel Kate Moss to the stand. CNN's Chloe Melas is joining us now. This has been dramatic every step of the way. This is going to be extra dramatic, Chloe.

CHLOE MELAS, CNN ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER: Good morning, Brianna. You are right. Expect fireworks. What yesterday started the beginning of the last week of this trial that it feels like the entire world is watching. And yes, we are going to hear from Johnny Depp's ex Kate Moss.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MELAS (voice-over): A new star witness set to testify in the $50 million defamation suit actor Johnny Depp has brought against his ex- wife Amber Heard.

Supermodel Kate Moss is expected to be called as a rebuttal witness for Johnny Depp in the final days of the trial, a source close to Depp tells CNN.

Moss and Depp dated in the '90s and remained close, the source confirmed. Moss is expected to testify about a rumored incident between her and Depp involving a flight of stairs.

Earlier this month Heard mentioned the alleged incident when testifying about a March 2015 fight where she punched Depp. She said she feared he was going to shove her sister Whitney Henriquez down a flight of stairs.

AMBER HEARD, ACTRESS: And see my little sister with her back on -- face -- her back to the staircase and Johnny swings at her. I just, in my head, instantly think of Kate moss and the stairs and I swung at him.

MELAS (voice-over): Heard mentioning the model by name opened the door for Moss to testify in the trial. Depp's attorney seemingly elated, pumping his fist and smiling at Depp. On Monday, Heard's team continued to rebut Depp's claims of defamation. Both Depp and Heard denied being abusive and cast each other as the abuser in their relationship.

Entertainment expert Kathryn Arnold testified that Depp's career was on a downward trajectory and his reputation was already suffering before Heard wrote a 2018 "Washington Post" opinion piece that she was a victim of domestic violence.

She testified that Disney dropped Depp from "Pirates of the Caribbean 6" for other reasons.

KATHRYN ARNOLD, ENTERTAINMENT EXPERT: The rising cost of Mr. Depp's talent, the challenges that they had to keep it on budget of his lateness and his tardiness and all the other allegations that would affect a brand such as Disney, so there were many problems.

MELAS (voice-over): Heard is counter-suing Depp for $100 million, claiming her career has suffered because of statements from Depp's team.

ARNOLD: I'd like to call "Aquaman" really, you know, Amber Heard star is born moment.

MELAS (voice-over): Arnold testified that Heard's role in sequel to "Aquaman" was greatly diminished after Depp's attorney called Heard's allegations of domestic violence a hoax.

Arnold testified Heard has not made any other studio movies and estimates it's Heard who has suffered the loss of millions of dollars.

Heard's team also called an expert orthopedic surgeon, casting doubt on Depp's description of how his fingertip as severed. He claimed Heard threw a glass bottle at him causing the injury. Dr. Richard Moore says that Depp's injuries are not consistent with that account.

RICHARD MOORE, ORTHOPEDIC SURGEON WITH EMERGE ORTHO: The description was of the hand being flat on the bar and the -- and the model pressing the finger from the top.

But, looking at the images there's really no significant injury to the dorsum of the finger and to create the type of injury with that -- with that type of a crush injury we would anticipate both injury to the fingernail and other parts of the finger.

MELAS (voice-over): Also testifying for Heard, Dr. David Spiegel, a psychiatrist who is an expert in intimate partner violence.