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Car Bomb Kills Daughter of Putin Supporter Near Moscow; 3 Law Enforcement Officers Off Duty After Violent Arrest in Arkansas; DOJ Has Until This Week to Turn Over Redacted Mar-a-Lago Affidavit. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired August 22, 2022 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm John Berman. Brianna is off. CNN's chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins here with us this morning.

Russian authorities launching a murder investigation after the daughter of nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin was killed on the outskirts of Moscow. Russia's investigative committee says it believes someone planted explosives and ordered the attack. 29-year-old Darya Dugina died at the scene. She was a Russian TV commentator and an outspoken supporter of Russia's actions in Ukraine.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Dugina's father Alexander owned the vehicle and might have been the intended target. He is an influential writer in Russia, he advocates for an aggressive imperialist Russia, and many believe that his ideas have a lot of sway inside the Kremlin. Some Russian officials are already blaming Ukraine for the deadly bombing, but a top adviser to Ukraine's president says that his country had nothing to do with it.

Fred Pleitgen has the latest from the Moscow.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Kaitlan. And just to give you an idea of how dangerous the situation this has already created, the read of "Russia Today," obviously Kremlin controlled media, has come out and demanded that Kyiv be hit in response to the death of Darya Dugina.

Of course you already just mentioned the fact that there are some in Russia who are implying that the Ukrainians might be behind it, first and foremost the spokeswoman for Russia's Foreign Ministry, but the Ukrainians are saying they had absolutely no part in this at all. At the same time the investigation into this continues and of course, again, the Russians are saying they don't know who's behind all this at this point in time.

They say that the device was not only planted on the car and detonated but that it was remotely detonated. That's the new information that we have today and that of course indicates that there was a certain degree of sophistication.

One thing that's also hotly being debated here in Russia is there are many people who believe that Darya Dugina, while she was quite prominent here in Russia, was nowhere near as prominent and as influential as her father Alexander Dugin who was at the same event who many believed would take that car to drive home but he took a different car that he was possibly the intended target of all of this.

All of this is sending chills into the upper echelons of Russian state controlled media and Russian politics as well. You know, as I mentioned, it's already creating a very dangerous situation that we can see play out internationally, especially between Ukraine and Russia -- Kaitlan.

COLLINS: Yes. And I know they said there weren't security checks at the parking lot where they had been parked.

Fred Pleitgen, thank you.

BERMAN: All right, joining us now is foreign policy analyst Jonathan Wachtel. He's the former director of communications for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

Thank you so much for being with us this morning.

JONATHAN WACHTEL, FOREIGN POLICY ANALYST: Pleasure.

BERMAN: Obviously we don't know who did this. There is an investigation into it right now, but how does this affect the dynamic in that part of the world with the Russian invasion of Ukraine?

WACHTEL: Look, it's clearly a chilling event that's happened for the Russian establishment to see a car blown up, you know, just outside Moscow. Prominent figures, daughter, you know, an influential figure within the Kremlin itself. It's debatable how influential he is, but a lot of his beliefs and what he has said internationally and nationally has been digested and accepted as the way forward for Russia, for many Russian citizens. So this is obviously a chilling event for many.

COLLINS: And what do we know about his relationship with Putin, her father's relationship with Putin? Because there's been some talk about how close they were. I know that's been called into question of just how exactly what their relationship was, but he is this very influential writer. He does seem to hold a lot of -- have a lot of influence when it comes to the thinking. He backed the invasion. He backed putting more Russian forces into Ukraine, of course, as this was getting started.

WACHTEL: Vladimir Putin already has ambition that, you know, irrespective of his relationship with Dugin, he also wants the reconstitution of what was the former Soviet Union, the Russian empire. So it's not as if Vladimir suddenly woke up and suddenly started reading Dugan's philosophy and suddenly, oh wow, this is a great philosophy, I've got to embrace this. It's just that they have like-minded perspectives on what Russia should be and Russia's influential in the world.

So he's been -- Dugin has been an advocate for what Vladimir Putin has done within Georgia, what he's been doing within the Ukraine, the war, and you know, continued efforts by Moscow to reconstitute the empire that it once held within Europe and Asia.

BERMAN: You're already hearing nationalists say this is even more reason to redouble efforts inside Ukraine, to take more territory there. What concerns are there that Putin might use this, whoever is responsible, to exploit that?

WACHTEL: A frightening prospect is that there was a guy named Joseph Stalin who stopped at nothing, I mean, even, you know, imprisoning and murdering his own people in gulags, you know.

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And Stalin happens to be a figure who is revered, maybe not entirely by Alexander Dugin and his daughter Darya who has now been killed, but certainly a figure who is looked upon as a power and a thing of national pride in which there was this effort and Russia and the former Soviet Union in those days was taken seriously. It was a super power and contended with on the world stage going, you know, fist to fist with the United States, the other super power.

That's where Russia wants to see itself or at least Vladimir Putin's Russia, Dugin's Russia. That's where this is what they want to see happen within the world, that type of power, that type of influence in the world. A Russia that stands its own and is once again resurrected as a great nation on the planet and has huge sway over everything that happens on our globe.

COLLINS: And when it comes to this explosion, we don't know that this is connected at all to what's happening in Ukraine, but we have seen already Russian state television blaming the Ukrainians. Aides to President Zelenskyy said they have nothing to do with this, they said we're not a terrorist state, obviously indicating Russia is in their belief.

How do the Russians use this going forward? What does this look like beyond just, you know, Putin and some of the Russians saying that they do believe Ukraine is responsible?

WACHTEL: Yes. I mean, the big question here, Kaitlan, is where is the truth? You know, are we going to know the truth? Is the investigation going to reveal the truth or an interpretation of the truth that plays into the narrative of the Kremlin? I would think it would, right? So, you know, we had an immediate reaction of placing blame by some parties. The Kremlin is taking its time looking at what the Ukrainians are saying in reaction to this. The government saying they have nothing to do with it.

It is very difficult to determine what happens. There are nearly two million Ukrainian national, people of ethnic and Ukrainian roots living within Russia. Are they happy with what they're seeing happen to their brethren and sisters in Ukraine? I mean, you know, let's face it, Dugin and Dugina had enemies. You know, whether they carried this out domestically, whether it is international meddling and, you know, an attack, clearly there was an explosion of a car. You know, everybody says that Dugin was the target. The truth is father and daughter could have been the target. They

could have been traveling in the same vehicle, it just so happened that Darya got behind the wheel, you know. It's going to be hard to determine when the investigation comes out with something what we're looking at.

BERMAN: And look, I think the important words to take away from this are chilling as you said, and Frederik Pleitgen in Moscow noting how tense the situation is. That's what we know this morning. Beyond that, still needs to be determined.

Jonathan, thank you so much for being with us.

WACHTEL: My pleasure.

COLLINS: This morning also a new video that shows a violent arrest in Arkansas as two deputies and an officer appear to punch a suspect in the face and knee him in the side and his back. All three officers that you see in this video have been taken off duty and they are now under investigation.

CNN's Omar Jimenez joins me now.

Omar, there are still a lot we do not know about this, but what do we know right now?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kaitlan, for starters, obviously the video is very ugly. I think the question that comes to mind for a lot of people is, was this amount of force really necessary? It's also the question at the center of a state investigation into how an initial call for allegedly being spit on and threatened ended like this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIMENEZ (voice-over): Three Arkansas law enforcement officers have been removed from duty after this video showing them hitting a man outside a store in Mulberry, Arkansas, was posted to social media. The officers are seen punching and kneeing the suspect repeatedly and later arresting him.

In the video a woman not seen can be heard screaming to stop beating him, telling the officers he needs his medicine. An officer points and yells at her to back up. The person who posted the video says her sister witnessed the altercation.

The two Crawford County deputies were suspended and the Mulberry police officer placed on administrative leave while the incident is investigated. Police say the man in the video is 27-year-old Randal Worcester of Goose Creek, South Carolina. They accuse him of threatening and spitting on a gas station attendant in a nearby town. The clerk then called the police.

Worcester then rode a bike to the County Express convenience store in Mulberry where he was arrested outside the store. One witness tell CNN affiliate KHBS it looked like the man got up to run away to avoid arrest but the sheriff claims he got up to attack an officer.

Worcester is being held at the county jail on multiple charges including first-degree assault and second-degree battery. It's unclear whether he has an attorney.

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The Crawford County Sheriff's Office released a statement writing, "I hold all of my employees accountable for their actions and will take appropriate measures in this matter."

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson tweeted, "The local arrest incident in Crawford County will be investigated pursuant to the video evidence and the request of the prosecuting attorney."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JIMENEZ: Now Worcester was hit with a number of charges including assault and resisting arrest. But this is an incident that's going to take a lot of investigation. The sheriff's office says a state investigation was opened into what will be limited to the physical force used here against the officers involved, only once that's done could it be referred to a county prosecutor for any potential charges -- John.

COLLINS: A lot of questions going forward. Omar, thank you.

BERMAN: All right. I want to bring in CNN's senior law enforcement analyst and former Philadelphia police commissioner, Charles Ramsey.

Commissioner, thank you so much for being with us. Look, we don't know very much about this incident. When you look at this video what questions do you have?

CHARLES RAMSEY, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, I mean, it does appear excessive, especially the blows to the face and the head, at one point in time you see one of the officers actually lift the head up and push it down into the pavement. Obviously that raises the level of force considerably. You know, it isn't easy to handcuff someone who doesn't want to be handcuffed, but at the same time you have to use only that force that's necessary and proportional in order to effect the arrest.

It looks to me like one of them is actually a supervisor. I saw Chevrons on the sleeve of the one individual near the body of the individual, near the legs.

BERMAN: You say it looks excessive. And, again, there is a lot we don't know and you are just basing this on looking at the video right now, but what looks excessive to you given what you see?

RAMSEY: The blows to the face. The blows to the head. The lifting of the head and pushing it down toward the pavement. I mean, that's the part that is the most disturbing. I mean, listen, watching someone being taken into custody that's fighting is not a pretty thing to look at. So when I look at a video I look at the kind of force that's being used and whether or not it's necessary. And certainly the blows to the head at the same time you're trying to get a person to put their hands behind their back, think about it, it doesn't make sense.

If you're getting hit in the face you're going to lift your hands to try to protect your face. And so, you know, those kinds of things are what you look for and you've got three officers, one suspect, and so when you look at that and I don't know what the outcome of this investigation is going to be, but just from the video evidence I would say that that's excessive force.

BERMAN: What's the right way to do it?

RAMSEY: Well, the right way is to get the person to cooperate, handcuff them and take them into custody. That happens the majority of the time. But if you have an individual and you take them to the ground, you have to try to get them in a position where they can be handcuffed. Now you have three people there, you're literally wrestling. The part of the video and granted all these videos look disturbing, but it's the blows to the face that really put this in a different category when it comes to use of force.

But every time it's going to be slightly different depending on the level of resistance, but blows to the face and the head, kneeling on the neck, all those kinds of things, from the shoulders up, that kind of force is when it becomes excessive.

BERMAN: Now, if in the course of the investigation it is determined that the suspect lunged or made movements toward the officers, how does that affect the situation?

RAMSEY: No, I mean, that would be part of why you made the arrest, but it doesn't -- it doesn't give you permission to then use excessive force in taking the individual into custody, period. It just doesn't. And so when you look at this you have to look at the level of force that's being used. Is it necessary? Is it proportional? And is it objectively reasonable? Those are the three standards that you look at when you're reviewing these types of cases.

It may have been necessary to use force, but was it proportional? And it doesn't appear that it was, nor does it appear to be reasonable to continue to punch him in the face, lift his head off the pavement and actually drive it back into the pavement. That could cause serious injury, even death.

BERMAN: Charles Ramsey, it's great to have you on helping us understand how we should be looking at this this morning. Thank you.

RAMSEY: OK.

BERMAN: Donald Trump's potential legal jeopardy as the Department of Justice races to redact the affidavit that was used to launch the search of Mar-a-Lago.

And a reprieve for Senator Lindsey Graham. The South Carolina senator does not have to appear before a grand jury for now.

COLLINS: Plus several critical reports this week that could determine whether or not the United States is heading toward a recession.

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COLLINS: The Justice Department is facing a major deadline this week because a federal judge has given the department until Thursday, this Thursday, to propose a redacted version of the affidavit behind the search of former President Trump's Florida home. Justice Department officials are arguing that the release of the affidavit could potentially compromise their ongoing investigation which Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff said yesterday is a legitimate concern but he also acknowledge the clear public interest in this case.

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REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): You could learn what witnesses may have seen in terms of the handling of those documents or people coming and going from where the documents were located. You could learn about whether representations were made that proved to be false in terms of whether they have given up the classified information. You could learn a great deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Joining us now is CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig and "New York Times" deputy opinion editor Patrick Healy.

Thank you so much for both being here this morning. What is happening inside the Justice Department right now as they are preparing for Thursday? Because they very clearly did not want to have to release this affidavit. They said it could compromise the investigation, but this judge wants them at least to give them some version of it.

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ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Here's the conversation inside DOJ right now, OK, guys, how do we look like we're giving as much as possible while actually giving as little as humanly possible? Prosecutors are very protective of these affidavits. This is where you lay out the entire probable cause for your case.

Now there are some parts of the affidavit, having done a bunch of these, that you can probably unredact without doing any harm. There's the standard legal boilerplate, where you explain this is a search warrant, where you have probable cause, et cetera. There's the part where you describe the premises, Mar-a-Lago is a however many room resort. There's the part where you describe where you want to search.

But when it comes to that part of the investigation, here's our probable cause, I cannot conceive of a way that you unredact any of that without jeopardizing your investigation. And even if you're going to unredact part, I don't know how you unredact part of your description of your investigation but not another part without being inherently misleading. So it's a tricky tack. BERMAN: You know, Patrick, it's interesting, I think there's a

tendency when people look at something like this to say, oh, if X happens it's good for this side, it's bad for that side. I think in this case how possible is it that once this document is released it's not great for either of the investigators or the people being investigated. The only people who may benefit from it are people who want transparency to know what's going on.

PATRICK HEALY, DEPUTY OPINION EDITOR, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Yes. I think that's right, John. I mean, both sides want to be seen as essentially sort of winning a fight for public perception. You know, what is the amount of information that each side is willing to put out and I think on the left I think there is real concern that the right has sort of framed this as ultimately a raid, as something that went, you know, for a lot of voters into a place of fear, that the federal government overreaching, coming into their lives, and the desire to put out some kind of fact-based information that says this is what we were looking for.

This is the reason the justification for going into Mar-a-Lago is great right now. And so whether, I guess, the amount of information, the amount of detail, you know, that would be persuasive, that's just unclear how much will come out.

COLLINS: And it could be helpful in the sense of just establishing more facts about what's going on because there are questions from both sides of the political aisle about this. I think everyone wants to know more about what's going on.

I do want to see what you think about something that Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw said yesterday when he was talking about this because I think Republicans initially were very critical of the Justice Department search of this, that they signed off on, now they're talking about what they think happened and they're framing the facts in this way.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DAN CRENSHAW (R-TX): I still haven't seen any evidence that he was even asked, that Trump was even asked to give these documents back. He's been cooperating with them on these issues for a while now, for months. And so why take it to this extreme extent? And I think that's why you're seeing so much backlash from Republicans, you're seeing everyone coalesce, doesn't matter what side of the issue they are on with Trump, you've seen a lot coalesce around this one because it does seem unjust and there does seem to be a long history of loss of credibility at the Department of Justice at the hands of Democrats. And I think people are rightfully frustrated about that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: He says he hasn't seen evidence that Trump -- that they tried to get the documents back from Trump. It seems pretty clearly established at this point that they tried to get the documents back from Trump. HONIG: Yes, he's missing a very important part of the whole story

here. Let's just recap. The National Archives tried first and they got 15 boxes but not all the documents. Then what did DOJ do? They were remarkably patient. They tried to subpoena first.

BERMAN: Which is a way of asking.

HONIG: It's the nice way, it's the easy way. It's the hey, here's --

COLLINS: A good way to ask.

HONIG: Right. It's the way without sending a whole bunch of agents. They sent a subpoena or they served a subpoena. They got, again, some of the boxes but not all. And to me that's a really important part of the story. When the story first broke you remember we were saying well, it will be really interesting and important to see, did they use a subpoena first or did they just jump right to search warrant? It turned out they did try the easy way first.

COLLINS: And had a statement of some sort from Trump's team saying we turned everything over, they believed they didn't and they went in.

HEALY: Right. That's right. The problem right now is that, you know, for -- I think for a lot of Democrats looking at this is that there is a real disinformation campaign happening on the right in terms of how they're portraying the FBI, the Department of Justice, and how do federal officials deal with that. How do you sort of come back without essentially sort of putting out more information than you want to, putting out more details than you want to, but the desire to essentially portray Trump as this person who is being politically persecuted, who is being kind of a martyr in this space is such a dangerous disinformation campaign.

And right now Elie knows this best, lawyers are going to be in sort of a tough spot trying to sort of negotiate and kind of clarify that.

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HONIG: Yes. Being a prosecutor is the best job in the world but one of the things that's really tough about it is when it comes to PR campaigns your hands are tied. You can't get out there and respond sort of tit for tat everything thrown against you. Sometimes you just have to take it.

MELBER: There is a "New York Times" story out this week and other the organization has done it, too, which detail the last few days of the Trump administration, and you were covering the White House during that time and you know how chaotic things can get in any White House let alone that White House.

But, Elie, what questions does that answer and what does it not answer in terms of these documents? What does it matter how chaotic it was and they don't know who was packing what boxes to where?

HONIG: Oddly enough if there was this sort of environment of chaos and confusion, that could be Donald Trump's best defense when you're talking about potential crimes relating to these documents. We're all focused on the defenses, we're hearing from Rudy Giuliani every day, the defenses are shifting. But you always have to keep in mind, prosecutors bear the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt and the first thing you have to show as a prosecutor is knowledge and intent that Donald Trump or whoever you're thinking of indicting knew what was going on and had criminal intent.

And if the answer is, it was just chaos, we were moving, we've all moved, it's chaos, nobody quite knew what was what and there were no clear lines of instruction you are going to have a real hard time as a prosecutor making those showings.

BERMAN: But --

HEALY: I would just add to that. The number of officials as we remember who were leaving the White House at that time, you could find Trump and Trump's lawyers making an argument that, you know, we weren't getting advice. People would, you know, this staff secretary wasn't there, these lawyers were busy with, you know, these other issues.

BERMAN: But by my understanding, you know, January of 2021 is not June of 2022, Elie, and that's the problem.

HONIG: Right. Yes, exactly.

BERMAN: Explain why.

HONIG: So the come back to that is, well, OK, when the dust settled and these boxes were at Mar-a-Lago, what we were talking about before, they were given multiple chances, hey, OK, maybe there was confusion in the moving van, but now we need it back, Archives said now we need it back, DOJ said now we need it back, and still somebody in Trump world is making the decision give them those boxes but not these boxes multiple times over. So that would be the prosecutor's response.

COLLINS: And even Dan Crenshaw in that interview with Jake Tapper said whichever attorney which has not been named yet said, yes, there's no more classified information here could be potentially in big trouble.

Thank you both so much for helping us break all of that down.

Meanwhile, monkeypox is spreading and spreading quickly as officials are trying to get the vaccine for it out as fast as they can. We'll tell you how the White House is trying to work with the groups that need it the most.

BERMAN: Plus how much it might cost to raise a child today. Christine Romans calls children cost centers.

COLLINS: This is why I don't have kids.

BERMAN: Yes. This won't help. This won't help. The eye-popping number for any potential parent.

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