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The Situation Room

Trump Headed for Anchorage, Alaska for Summit; Trump and Putin Meet Face-to-Face in Alaska; D.C. Attorney General Sues Trump Administration. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired August 15, 2025 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking News with President Trump headed here to Anchorage, Alaska to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in just a few hours. A U.S. official tells CNN that, quote, "all options are on the table," including the president walking out if he and Putin cannot agree to a deal. I spoke to a European diplomat earlier who said that U.S. and European leaders are aligned as the President begins these negotiations.

Joining me now, Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro from Texas. He's on the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees. Congressman, thanks so much for taking time this morning.

REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO (D- TX), FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE AND INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Yes, good to be with you.

SCIUTTO: So, as we enter the final few hours before the Russian and U.S. leaders sit down, I wonder, do you believe President Trump will represent Ukraine's interests, will protect Ukraine's interests in these talks with the Russian leader?

CASTRO: Well, I mean, you know, to be honest, like a lot of folks, I have my concerns, but I wish the president the best. I hope that he's able to achieve a ceasefire, ideally an end of the war or as the White House has indicated, setting up later meetings that can achieve that. So, I think as Americans, I think we should be hopeful that the president is able to negotiate some kind of ceasefire and basically bring an end to this war.

SCIUTTO: When I've been speaking to Ukrainian contacts, including members of parliament in the days leading up to this meeting, their expectations are measured. They're not convinced, certainly, that there will be some grand agreement here, but they do have some fear that they might be left out of the negotiations to some degree. I know that in your district you have a lot of Ukrainian Americans, do they have similar fears?

CASTRO: Yes, absolutely. I think the president -- I think he should have done it differently. I think he should have included Ukraine from the beginning. I do think that there's a danger here that President Trump negotiates away certain things from Ukraine without their presence and without their consent, and then tries to strong arm Ukraine into accepting what could be terrible conditions. So, you know, as I said at the beginning, I have my concern. I also think that he should have included our European partners from the beginning because they have an incredible stake in what happens here. They have also committed billions of dollars in support to Ukraine over these last few years.

And also, Jim, very importantly, this could set a precedent, good or bad. The concern there is that if President Trump goes into these negotiations and negotiates away a country's piece of territory or land, that could set a very dangerous precedent going forward for, you know, incentives for other countries to invade countries and then count on a negotiation later on that's going to allow them to keep that territory. That's exactly what we've tried to prevent post-World War II.

SCIUTTO: Yes, no question. I mean, that's why many have referred to this as a 1939 moment. Do you believe given your presence on the Foreign Affairs Committee that China is watching these talks closely, particularly given China's own ambitions regarding Taiwan?

CASTRO: Oh, absolutely. And when I say that this could set a precedent, good or bad, the concern there is that I think China is watching. They're watching to see how the United States handles this, how the world reacts to it. And you know, we know that they have their eye on Taiwan. And it's not just, you know, something that they're looking at for the next year or even the next five years, that's in their long-term horizon. And so, the president, I think, you know, could do good things here, but could also, quite honestly, fail very badly and set a bad precedent depending on how this turns out.

SCIUTTO: To domestic politics. The State of Texas, Democrats there in the middle of a redistricting fight. And there are reports now that Texas Democrats are ready to come home given in part what the California governor said about California's possible redistricting plans. Do you believe that's the right move? Are you concerned that Democratic lawmakers there are going to open the door to Republicans rewriting, redrawing the map?

[10:35:00]

CASTRO: Well, first, you know, I want to say that I'm very proud of the state legislators who left to Chicago to stop what we believe is an illegal and unconstitutional redrawing of these Texas congressional districts, what really is a kind of power graph that most of all is going to hurt every Texan, but it's especially going to hurt African American and Latino communities. And by their actions, they have raised the stakes here and they help get California and other states to consider countering Texas.

You know, I was part of the group of Democrats that left the state in the same way in 2003 to stop mid-decade redistricting. And one of the mistakes that Democrats made back then, Democratic governors, is that when Texas took away six seats from Democrats nobody responded, no Democratic governor in the country responded. And I think a big success here has been that our state reps have really gotten other Democratic governors to start to respond. SCIUTTO: Do you believe that your district may disappear?

CASTRO: Well, you know, it's interesting, Jim, a few weeks or maybe a week before the maps came out, my office got a call from, I believe the Texas Legislative Council as they were drawing these maps, and they asked me to verify my home address. And so, you know, we gave them my home address. And then the maps come out and I look at the district and my house is literally about a half mile outside of the district that I now represent. And that's the same case for people like Jasmine Crockett and other Democrats.

So, they intentionally have tried to draw out a lot of Hispanic and African American legislators, members of Congress from the districts that they now represent.

SCIUTTO: Congressman Castro, we do appreciate you joining us this morning. Thanks so much.

CASTRO: Great to be with.

SCIUTTO: Wolf and Pam, just a few hours away here in Anchorage. Back to you.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And we're watching all of this unfold together with you, Jim. Thank you very, very much.

And just ahead, right here in the Situation Room, the battle between two attorneys general. D.C.'s attorney general taking the Trump administration to court right now after the U.S. attorney general officially put the city's police force under federal control. The D.C. attorney general, Brian Schwalb, will join us. That's coming up soon.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:40:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: And back to our breaking news. Right now, President Trump is in the air and on the way to Alaska for his crucial summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Not attending this critical meeting, officials from the very country where almost all of the fighting is happening, Ukraine. Trump has floated land swapping as a path to peace. Both Russia and Ukraine reject giving up their land.

Here with us now in the Situation Room is CNN Military Analyst Retired Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton. Colonel, great to see you. Tell us more about why the eastern region of Ukraine has been at the forefront of these discussions.

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST AND U.S. AIR FORCE (RET.): Yes. So, Pamela, this is one of those areas where you really have a lot going on here. This region is the one that we're talking about right here. And this is, as you can see, primarily occupied by the Russians. There are pieces of Ukrainian territory right here. But the reason this is so important is because this Eastern region is actually the seat of a lot of industry, a lot of natural resources. In the pre-war area, this province right here, the province of Donetsk, had about 10 percent or so of the population of Ukraine, about 4 million people lived here. The population of Ukraine at the time was around 40 million. A little bit more than that. So, it's rich in terms of population. It's rich in terms of resources. And it's also strategically important because one of the key things here is there are a lot of fortified areas that the Ukrainians control right now. So, if this for some reason is moved out of the Ukrainian control zone, the Ukrainians will lose a lot of the strategic advantages that they have right now.

BROWN: Tell us more about the other two regions where Russia has made significant gains.

LEIGHTON: So, let's take a look at the southern region. This is the Kherson region. So, one of the key things here, Pamela, is that this area was liberated by the Ukrainians when they had their summer offensive two years ago, and they moved into the area that captured the provincial capital of Kherson. This area is really important because it controls the access to the Black Sea through the Dnipro River right here.

This is a primary means of transportation in Ukraine, it's kind of like the Mississippi in the U.S. And the big thing here is that this area now is divided between Ukrainian control and Russian control. And you have several things here. You have the Kakhovka Dam, which was flooded, and that resulted in massive destruction in this particular area here.

Plus, you have the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest power plant in Europe, and it's controlled by the Russians right now. And that very fact has created a lot of problems in terms of energy supply for the Ukrainians, plus the danger of a possible nuclear incident because of Russian control or something going on with an attack on that facility.

BROWN: All right. So, let's zoom out a little bit and look at what it would look like if you were to freeze the current lines of control.

[10:45:00]

LEIGHTON: Right. So, this was Ukraine in 2014. See how little the Russians actually controlled comparatively? They controlled Crimea, they controlled this part of the Donbas region, this part of Luhansk, this part of Donetsk. And then you go into what it was like in 2022. This is when the Russians invaded. And one of the key things here is when you look at these areas right here, the Russians were basically about ready to hit Kyiv. They were about ready to take it over, but when things changed, when the Ukrainians were able to actually move things forward, this is what happened. And the Ukrainians were able to recapture all of this area and the southern area that we just talked about around Kherson.

So, if the line of control were to be established like this, let's say the border becomes something like this, then the Russians would control it. This is more or less what the Ukrainians would settle for. The problem is if you have a situation that the Russians want, they'll want to control all of this or something like that.

BROWN: Because Vladimir Putin thinks Eastern Ukraine belongs to Russia's. He's had that stance. So --

LEIGHTON: That's right. Exactly. All of Eastern Ukraine to him because of the resources, the population and the ability to leverage those resources for Russia's economic advantage.

BROWN: Yes, and it's interesting because he's bringing business people with him apparently and talking about minerals that could be of interest to the U.S. which is actually in Ukrainian land, right?

LEIGHTON: That's correct.

BROWN: That Russia sees as its own. All right. Colonel Cedric Leighton, thank you so much. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:00]

BROWN: Breaking news into to CNN, the attorney general for Washington, D.C. is suing the Trump administration over what he calls the hostile takeover of the city's police department. D.C. attorney general Brian Schwalb joins us now to discuss this. Thanks for coming on.

So, the law, specifically, the Home Rule Act, gives Trump emergency powers to take over the city's law enforcement for, quote, "federal purposes." What exactly are you challenging here?

BRIAN SCHWALB, D.C. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Well, thank you for having me this morning. The president and the attorney general of the United States have attempted an illegal hostile takeover of our local police force, the Metropolitan Police Department. And in so doing, they have sowed chaos and endangered the public safety and the residents and visitors to the District of Columbia.

The Home Rule Act, which grants authority to the local government here in the District of Columbia, including to control the police, gives the president very limited authority to seek to have the assistance of the MPD and the mayor if there is a federal emergency that requires that. It does not give the president or the attorney general the authority to take over MPD and to purport to change the command and control and governance of MPD. That is exactly what the president and the attorney general's order seek to do. And that is why we are in court this morning seeking to hold the federal government accountable to following the law.

The Home Rule Act is a federal law passed by Congress, nobody is above the law, including the president, and most importantly our U.S. attorney general.

BLITZER: I want to dig deeper, Attorney General. You argue in your filing that Trump's actions are, and I'm quoting now from your document, "putting the safety of D.C. residents and visitors at risk," close quote. But since this takeover happened, the Trump administration is touting dozens of criminal arrests for assault and distribution of illegal drugs. It's also s saying that at least 10 handguns have been seized. Do you see any of that as progress?

SCHWALB: Look, over the last week, there has been a lot of confusion and chaos in the city, but what has been clear is that the chief of police, under the guidance of the mayor, has been working with federal law enforcement, which by the way, we do all day every day here in this city.

But the disruption, the takeover, or purported takeover of MPD throws that into chaos and confusion. And as Chief Smith has said in the papers, in her nearly 30 years of enforcing the law, both as a federal law enforcement officer and as chief of police, she has never seen any action that causes more risk to the public safety than the actions of A.G. Bondi last night in her Bondi order of about 7:45 at night.

BROWN: And earlier this week, the U.S. attorney for D.C., Jeanine Pirro called you out by name when she was talking about crimes committed by kids in the city. Let's watch what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEANINE PIRRO, U.S. ATTORNEY FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: These kids understand that the jurisdiction is through the state attorney general, Brian Schwalb. I did a poster of the young man from DOGE who was beaten bloody with a severe concussion, a broken nose. And then I did a poster of what happens to those kids, because I can't arrest them, I can't prosecute them. They go to family court and they get to do yoga and arts and crafts. Enough.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: How do you respond to that?

SCHWALB: Well, we have been prosecuting and holding young people accountable under the law since I've been attorney general. For the past two plus years, since I've been attorney general, the crime rates in this district have gone down meaningfully. In fact, even according to the Justice Department and the president's own words, crime in the district is more than 51 percent decreased since I've been attorney general. We are holding young people accountable and they should be held accountable.

While crime is on its way down here in the district one crime is one too many, and I'm not going to be satisfied until we stop all crime. The fact of the matter is that the federal government could be helping us in terms of addressing crime rather than interfering. We have a court that has nearly 20 plus percent of our -- that court judges on the superior court vacant, which disrupts the administration of justice, not just criminal justice, housing justice, civil cases. And the federal government has the ability to help us fill those vacancies.

[10:55:00] The federal government got in the way of more than a billion dollars of fiscal year '25 funding. That's taxpayer dollars, D.C. taxpayer dollars that could be used for programs and law enforcement here in the city. So, the federal government wants to help D.C. be safer, we welcome help. We do not need a hostile and illegal takeover.

BROWN: Just really quickly though, to follow up, what specifically are you doing in this case that Jeanine Pirro pointed out against the perpetrator of this DOGE employee? I mean, she's saying they go to family court and they get to do yoga, arts and crafts. What specifically are you doing in that case?

SCHWALB: Well, I'm not at liberty under our laws to talk about the specifics of any particular prosecution in the family court, but with all our cases, we will hold people accountable. We will hold them accountable under the law with the evidence we have. And our track record demonstrates that in terms of the number of prosecutions we've engaged in. So, much so the detention of young people has caused the mayor to have to issue an executive order to increase the capacity of our detention center. So, we are holding young people accountable under the law and we will continue to do so.

BLITZER: And, Attorney General, while the numbers clearly show that crime here in Washington, D.C. has been on the decline, the chairman of the D.C. Police Union says he agrees with Trump that crime is out of control in the city and that "something needs to be done," that's a direct quote. He also says, every aspect of D.C.'s criminal justice system is broken. Do you dispute what he says?

SCHWALB: I think that the union president is either misinformed or inaccurate in his statements regarding crime being reduced. Look, we have more work to do. Every community needs to fight as best as it can to keep people safe. I'm not going to be satisfied until we have a zero-crime rate in the city. That's part of what we have to do and I have to do as the chief law enforcement officer of our city.

But we have made progress under the local leadership of the mayor and the chief of police. We must be able to continue that progress and the interference of the federal government is not going to help, it's only going to hurt.

BLITZER: The D.C. attorney general, Brian Schwalb, thanks so much for joining us.

BROWN: Thank you.

SCHWALB: Thank you.

BLITZER: And let's go back to our Jim Sciutto who's reporting from Anchorage, Alaska right now. We're just a few hours away from the truly historic Trump-Putin summit. Jim.

SCIUTTO: No question, Wolf. This is a momentous event. A pivotal moment for Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine could happen today as Trump and Putin meets. I'll have my latest reporting coming up.

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