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Winter Storm Bringing Several Inches of Snow, Coastal Flooding to Northeast; Judge Says, Fani Willis Could Be Disqualified from Trump Georgia Case; Sources Say, House GOP Seeking Testimony from Special Counsel Robert Hur. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired February 13, 2024 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Right now, frigid temperatures, record snowfall and powerful winds, a strong nor'easter is slamming parts of the east coast where we are. We're tracking a storm affecting millions of people this morning.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis, at risk of getting kicked off the election subversion case that she helped put together, a critical hearing that will help determine her fate.

SIDNER: The high-stakes rescue in Gaza caught on camera, the Israeli military dodging bullets to free two hostages in Rafah. New details this morning on how those hostages are doing.

Kate Bolduan is out for today. I'm Sara Sidner with John Berman. This is CNN New Central.

Happening right now, a major storm moving across the northeast threatening millions with heavy rain, serious snowfall and coastal flooding. Right now, more than 30 million people are under a winter storm warning and more than a thousand flights have so far been canceled.

One of the hardest hit cities could be right here, New York City, which might get up to eight inches of snow, the most the city has seen in years.

CNN's Pete Muntean is standing by in D.C., but we begin, with Meteorologist Derek Van Dam, who decided to show up here in New York City.

Oh, now you are in the most beautiful park ever. That is gorgeous. What else is going on there?

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. Good morning, Sara. You know, this is the promenade at the mall in Central Park, a famous avenue, now snow lines, made famous by Serendipity, the movie, or Breakfast at Tiffany's. Now, it's just beautiful, real life snow globe. And people in New York are just coming outside and enjoying it. So many people have the day off. They're working from home, including the New York City public schools. In fact, one of such people are out here enjoying the snow. You can see the family. They've made a couple of snowmen in the distance.

This is an impactful storm, so we don't want to belittle what's happening, but it is certainly magical, certainly beautiful to be out here.

It has been 744 days. We're going back to January of 2022, the last time that there was a winter storm warning where I'm located right now. And it appears that we have actually broken a snowfall total that hasn't happened in over two years.

And we're going to give this kind of an unofficial measurement because in Central Park, they're not actually going to give us an updated snowfall total until about 1:00 P.M., but here on CNN first, we'll give this unofficial total.

This is a park bench, hasn't been disturbed by any human activity. Yes, there're some trees around, but let's get a little bit of a measurement here. And we're surpassing 2, 2.5 inches. And that's significant because it has been, again, so long since we've seen that amount of snow fall within this area.

It's very heavy, wet snow. And, of course, we actually refer to this as heart attack snow because it's so exhausting to shovel on your own. So, fire up those snow blowers if you do indeed have it.

The National Weather Service putting out a special weather statement here. Come on, let's take you down here so you can see how people are enjoying this. National Weather Service talking about anywhere from one to two inch per hour being recorded right now in New York City and the tri-state region.

Look at these snowfall totals. We have exceeded a foot in some locations across Pennsylvania.

[10:05:02]

Again, Central Park, 1.2 inches, but that was early this morning. We've certainly gotten more since then.

There's the radar. This is important because you're starting to see the back edge of this snow line and nobody wants to see that happen, right? We want the snow to continue to fall, but it is going to come to an end here in New York City by about noon today, and then it will be continuing through the Cape, for instance, in Coastal New England through about 3:00 P.M., an additional one to three inches of snow.

You can see the pre-treating that they're doing with some of the plows and the salt trucks here, Sara, doing everything they can to keep ahead of this storm. Back to you.

SIDNER: I know this is dangerous for a lot of people, but it is so beautiful. And please thank your photographer who was out there with you taking those gorgeous pictures. It is gorgeous.

All right, what is not so gorgeous, I'm sorry, Pete Muntean, not you, but this nor'easter is causing some serious problems when it comes to flights. We all get annoyed but this is the reality of weather. What are you seeing out there?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: You know, Delta just canceled its requested ground stop for flights going into JFK. And the big issue here with the storm is that it's going for some pretty big hubs, affecting a lot of flights for a lot of airlines.

Here are the latest numbers from FlightAware, 1,180 cancelations throughout the U.S. so far today, 767 delays. The most disrupted airports, LaGuardia, about 43 percent of all flights there canceled, at Newark, about 25 percent, another 25 percent at Boston Logan.

And the FAA is warning we are only seeing the beginning of this. It says we could see ground stops as the day goes on at Boston, Newark, LaGuardia, JFK, Philadelphia, Dulles, DCA, and at BWI.

So, we are only at the beginning here. And likely what we see when these storms happen is that there's a bit of a domino effect, especially when this storm like this goes for some airports that have a lot of connecting flights.

The good news here is that the airlines had a lot of cancelations of flights yesterday before this storm came in, meaning that a lot of folks late last night got the text message that their flight was delayed or canceled today and they were able to make other plans.

The other silver lining here is that airlines have enacted travel waivers, meaning that you can typically change your plans free of charge. If your flight is impacted by one of these storms or if you simply just want to get out of the way of it or if you've had plans on the backside change, you can do that relatively easily and the airlines have put in those plans so you can do that.

So, one big interesting tidbit here is that the FAA and its operations plan today alerted that there really was not going to be much in the way of flights today because the airlines canceled a lot of flights preemptively today. So, of course, a lot of people disappointed last night, maybe still disappointed today and we're only seeing the beginning of this, Sara, this is just only 10:00 A.M. on the East Coast.

SIDNER: I mean, it is winter and we haven't seen a storm like this in a while, but it's still February.

Pete Muntean, thank you so much, and also to Derek Van Dam and his team out there in the elements. John?

BERMAN: All right. Just in, an attorney for Donald Trump says that Trump is expected to attend Thursday's hearing in the New York hush money case. Now, that might be surprising that some people had read some other reporting because apparently he had considered, or at least they claimed that he was considering going to Georgia on Thursday to attend a separate hearing. That's in the criminal case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

Now, this hearing on Thursday in Georgia is one that could get her booted from the case. Willis is accused of benefiting from a romantic relationship with her lead prosecutor on the case, Nathan Wade, allegedly taking vacations with him, paying a higher salary. Trump and several of his co-defendants want the entire case thrown out.

CNN's Nick Valencia is in Atlanta watching this. What can we expect, Nick?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's a big if if she gets thrown out but the judge presiding over this case has left the door open and that set the stage for what is expected to be a very dramatic and perhaps defining day for this case.

We've really been drilling down on what happens if Fani Willis is disqualified and we spoke recently to the man who would be tasked with replacing her. The executive director of the Prosecuting Attorney's Council here in Georgia, they would be tasked with finding a replacement for Willis and that's no easy feat considering the politics surrounding this and the safety concerns. In fact, according to our reporting we know that Fani Willis approached two people before she approached Nathan Wade for this job and at least one of them decided not to take it because of the political spotlight and the safety concerns.

But we recently spoke to Pete Skandalakis and asked him what would go into his decision and potentially how long that could take.

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PETER SKANDALAKIS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PROSECUTING ATTORNEY'S COUNCIL OF GEORGIA: It's a historic event and you have to find somebody with the resources and experience that is capable of handling this type of case.

[10:10:03]

I think this case has a lot of people emotionally tied to it. And that does make things a little bit more complex because there is the security issue that always goes along with a case of this magnitude that has this much attention.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA: At this point, any change to the D.A.'s team especially one as significant as removing potentially Fani Willis would be disastrous for the D.A. It would delay this case indefinitely and just potentially derail it all together.

We should mention that Fani Willis was disqualified from investigating an unindicted co-conspirator in this case, Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, who participated in the fake electors scheme. She was disqualified months ago from that and there has still not been a special prosecutor named in that investigation. John?

BERMAN: Important point of the timeline there. Nick Valencia, thank you very much.

With us now, CNN Legal Analysts, former U.S. Attorney Michael Moore. Counselor, great to see you.

The judge in this case who set the hearing for Thursday said the reason he was setting the hearing was, quote, roughly. Quote, it's possible the facts alleged by the defendants could lead to a disqualification for Fani Willis. So, what's the bar here?

MICHAEL MOORE, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I'm glad to be with you. Yesterday was a bad day for the district attorney. There's no question about it. I don't know if the judge could have spoken any louder if he was shouting through a megaphone from the bench.

But he's going to look and he said, is there a conflict here or is there an appearance of a conflict or some impropriety? And that appearance alone by -- that is I think the issue that's going to be there.

Nobody cares who she dates. That's not the issue. The question will be whether or not she paid somebody and then benefits from those payments because of the prosecution, because the case is going on. Does it look like she's gaining something financially because of the case itself?

And that seems to be the argument the defense is making by saying that she benefited by taking these trips and by having Mr. Wade, who she's been paying about three quarters of a million dollars by having him pay for her travel and hotel stay, airfare, those kinds of things. So, that's going to be the question.

The D.A. was hoping yesterday that the judge would say, look, this is not going to be an issue. I'm not going to let you get into this. I'm going to quash the subpoenas that have been going out. But it was pretty clear that the defense attorney, Ms. Merchant, has the evidence in her back pocket already and did at the time that she filed a motion because she clearly laid out what she expected the witnesses to say, how they might impeach the testimony, and it may, at the end of the day, the response filed by the district attorney, including the declaration by Mr. Wade, if those contain any inaccuracies or facts or allegations, excuses that can be impeached by the witnesses, if that's the case, that filing alone may be the biggest problem that she faces with the court.

BERMAN: All right. Two different things there, one, you mentioned the appearance of impropriety, which is a different standard there. What is that going to mean? Appearance, it doesn't mean you have to prove that something untoward happened just that people might perceive it to be so?

MOORE: That's right. I mean, a prosecutor's job is to protect the case, to protect the integrity of the prosecution and hopefully the integrity of the conviction if one is obtained. If you think about what happened in the case involving the lieutenant governor, Judge McBurney said, look, the optics of this are terrible. You can't hold a political fundraiser for his opponent while he's been named a target of the investigation or potential target. And so that was an appearance problem. There was no factual information that said that she had taken anything or done anything. Here, you've got the real possibility that they will be able to connect that she is getting money because of this case, and that is she's getting a financial benefit by way of travel and other things, money that she's paying Mr. Wade.

BERMAN: You talked about the hearing and what may or may not come into play, the possibility that the defense lawyers may try to show that something that she testified to in her depositions and whatnot was inaccurate. What will this evidentiary hearing look like?

MOORE: Well, the judge was very careful to say, I'm not going to let it turn into a circus. I'm not -- you know, there are certain rules of evidence to keep you from trying this to harass or embarrass people, and I'm not going to do that.

But I think likely you'll see the first witness, or one of the first witnesses being the former law partner and friend of Mr. Wade, who the judge wants to hear from before he decides about requiring Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade to testify to themselves, but you'll hear what he knows about the relationship and what he knows about when the relationship started.

And if those facts are contrary to assertions made in judicial or in this court filing by the district attorney or in the declaration, the sworn declaration from Mr. Wade, that's going to really cause him a problem.

So, I think he's not going to let them talk about where they went, where Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis may have gone to dinner and those kinds of things, but I think he is going to let him say, you know, what you have said is not true.

[10:10:05]

And this relationship began before you've said it began. And that begins to create the appearance of an impropriety and a conflict, a potential conflict of interest, because then you're paying Mr. Wade with state money and receiving some financial benefit.

BERMAN: Michael Moore, the judge says he doesn't want this to be a circus. It's going to be hard. It's going to be hard to keep it from getting that way.

MOORE: It's going to be hard.

BERMAN: Thank you very much for explaining it so well to all of us. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. Sources are telling CNN that House Republicans are calling on Special Counsel Robert Hur to testify about his report on President Biden's handling of classified documents. Hur determined that charges against President Biden were unwarranted, but Republicans have seized on Hur's depiction of Joe Biden as a forgetful commander- in-chief who failed to protect classified information. CNN's Katelyn Polantz is joining us now. What exactly do they want here? They have the report. It's 400 pages, but what do they want?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Sara, they want to hear from Special Counsel Robert Hur himself about the conclusions he drew in the report and what he wrote in that report.

Now, when Robert Hur testifies, which is something that is likely to happen, former special counsels have done the same before Congress, and in this case, the House Republicans want Robert Hur to sit maybe by the end of February. That is where the negotiations stand. But it's very likely that the Republicans will want to ask him on the panel, ask him about why he chose not to charge President Joe Biden with a crime, to explain that a little bit further, in that he found some evidence but not enough to charge Joe Biden for the willful retention of national security records or classified documents.

And then Democrats on the panel are very likely to want to ask Robert Hur about why he would go into such detail about Biden's memory, calling him an elderly man with a poor memory that a jury might not want to convict.

So, lots of questions there. The House Oversight Committee wants to potentially use this to fuel their impeachment proceedings against Joe Biden. So, they also are asking for a couple other things. They want classified materials that could be part of what Rob Hur's investigation was looking at. And they also want the full transcript of Joe Biden's interview with the special counsel.

SIDNER: This will be used in that way and certainly politically as well, that is happening right now.

All right, you also have an update for us on the January 6th criminal case. What are you learning now? This is just in.

POLANTZ: Just in. The Supreme Court, the Chief Justice John Roberts, has set a deadline for the special counsel's office to respond to Donald Trump. Trump went to the Supreme Court yesterday, putting his case on pause, asking for the Supreme Court to look at this big question of presidential immunity potentially, or at least give him a pause right now on the case.

The deadline the chief justice set is for next Tuesday in the afternoon, but the special counsel is very likely to file something much before then, getting this before the justices pretty quickly, and then we just wait to see what they will do with the Supreme Court. Sara?

SIDNER: Wow. So, next Tuesday is the deadline. We will be waiting to see what happens in the interim. Katelyn Polantz, thank you so much for following all this for us. John?

BERMAN: All right. Brand new video shows the moment Israel Defense Forces rescued two hostages in Gaza.

A major shift, the CDC is set to announce new isolation guidelines for people who test positive for COVID.

And new details about the Texas Church shooting suspect's past and mental health concerns.

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[10:20:00]

BERMAN: All right. CNN has obtained dramatic video of the moment two Israeli hostages were rescued in the Southern Gaza City of Rafah. The two Israeli-Argentinean men were rescued after the Israeli military carried out airstrikes that local officials from the Hamas-run territory said killed around 100 people.

Let's get to CNN's Jeremy Diamond in Tel Aviv, who's had a first look at all this video, Jeremy. What's in it?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it is really remarkable footage showing the moments that Israeli forces breached that building and also the moments that these two men, 70-year-old Louis Har, 60- year-old Fernando Marman were finally in a helicopter with Israeli forces being whisked out of Gaza and to a hospital on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

You can see both men in this video smiling, saying that they are doing well, clearly very happy to be out after their 128 day ordeal.

In drone footage from the operation itself, you can see about a dozen Israeli forces outside the building. You can see the moment that they breach that building, soldiers firing their weapons towards fighters in that building as well.

And what you also see in that video is the moment when these two hostages are whisked out. It's black and white. It's hard to tell exactly who is who, but you can see two men being moved along with soldiers alongside of them out of that building.

What this video also shows us is the airstrikes that followed minutes later. And as you just mentioned, we have now seen that those airstrikes resulted in a heavy, heavy casualty toll, including civilians. We've seen women and children among the dead and the injured from those strikes.

And today, we are seeing the after effects of those strikes, not only the injuries and the deaths caused by them, but the fear, the very palpable fear inside of Rafah, as hundreds of people began to flee that city of Rafah with the Israeli military vowing that it will carry out its next offensive in that city.

[10:25:02]

We have heard testimony from some of the individuals who are fleeing, many of them, in fact, returning to areas that they had previously fled to go to Rafah. Some of them coming from Al-Maghazi, for example, going -- went to Rafah seeking safety, and now that they see this coming Israeli offensive, they are fleeing once again towards the central part of the Gaza Strip.

But, overwhelmingly, the sentiment is one of exhaustion from having fled from place to place, seeking safety in a way that they can't seem to actually find it. And amid those fears, the Israeli military still yet to actually put a plan on the table for how to evacuate the estimated 1.4 million people who are believed to be living in that city now, a city normally of 300,000 people. So, major questions still remain about what will become of those people should an Israeli military offensive move forward. John?

BERMAN: All right. Jeremy Diamond in Tel Aviv, thank you, Jeremy, for all your reporting. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. Let's bring in CNN Global Affairs Analyst Kim Dozier and retired U.S. Army Major Mike Lyons.

I want to start with you, Mike Lyons, just about how precise this operation was and whether or not the United States, which has been pushing for this, has been making an argument to say, look, you can be more precise, Israel, in Gaza, and not have these huge numbers of civilians being killed. When you look at this, is that a good argument that the United States can make?

MAJ. MIKE LYONS (RET.), U.S. ARMY: I think Israel is going to continue to have pressure to be more precision with their attacks. I've talked to some of the folks, military, that have experience there, that do believe that Israel can be more precise with these attacks. But they're not going to give up this mission of trying to find these Hamas leaders where they believe are in this location. I think that's why they've decided to move this offensive operation down there.

They believe they're giving enough of a heads-up to civilians in these locations to get out of the way. And if they don't get out of the way, then this battle of who's proving with regard to civilians being used as shields makes Israel's point.

So, they could be more precise on some level, but from a straight military perspective, that's not going to keep them from accomplishing their objective of going after the leaders of these locations.

SIDNER: Kim Dozier, I want to talk to you about sort of the bigger picture here, as we see these incredible pictures of this rescue happening, how it happened. You have two men who may never have been released in custody, 128 days that Hamas had kept them in what looks like underground.

Can you give us some sense, though, of how this may play out over time when you look at the massive destruction also that's happened in Gaza and you still have a population of 2 million people having to function here?

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: The rescue of the hostages was a much needed win for the Israeli Defense Forces and for the Netanyahu government that proves their argument from their perspective that the only way they're going to get the hostages back is through military operations.

Also from their perspective, they've got to get into Rafah. Rafah is a border town that straddles the border with Egypt, and the Israeli military believes that it is riddled with a tunnel network that, if allowed to continue to exist, will just enable Hamas to escape and then come back and bring supplies back to do another October 7th-like attack.

But then that leaves the question of where do you move these millions of people because much of Gaza throughout has been destroyed and is filled with leftover unexploded ordnance. So, one of the ideas being proposed is that you try to push the people to some sort of tent camp nearer to the sea, but that would require that the U.N. and Israel and the other NGOs work together to allow new tent cities to be set up.

And so far, we haven't seen at the international level either the trust between these two bodies or any sort of move towards making this a reality. So, yes, Israel is marching towards this operation and marching towards possible tragedy, war tragedy for the Palestinians.

SIDNER: Mike Lyons, I had to ask you both this question after, this is moving on to what's happened with Donald Trump in the last couple of days, making his shocking statements about NATO and concerns about how Russia is going to receive that and how all of the allies would receive that.

When you hear those words of him encouraging Russia to do whatever the quote hell it wants, if NATO doesn't, quote/unquote, "pay up," what happens to those folks in Europe who are looking at this, their military, what are they talking about right now, you think, Mike?

[10:30:00]

LYONS: Well, it's concerning when we have a presidential candidate make that kind of comment, especially given what's currently happening in Europe right now.