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New York Officers Shot; AirAsia Search

Aired January 06, 2015 - 15:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Again, we played the sound of the president, as you say, speaking out of one side of his mouth, but very -- praising law enforcement.

(CROSSTALK)

DAVID CLARKE, MILWAUKEE COUNTY, WISCONSIN, SHERIFF: Well, I would like for you to bring up some of the comments that I have heard them say --

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Sir, I don't want to argue with you over what the president said or didn't say.

Let me just end with this. When we hear from the New York Police Department -- this is significant -- because this has been a recent issue. They're actually investigating officers to see if they're issuing fewer tickets out of protests connected to all of what we have been discussing.

If this were happening in Milwaukee County, how would you handle that as a sheriff?

CLARKE: For heaven sakes, these officers just laid their colleagues to rest. It's been about two weeks since these two officers were slain. Give them a break for heaven sakes.

They're still grieving. I was out there with them on Saturday. They're still suffering. They're still trying to come to grips with this. For people to think that they should just shrug their shoulders and say, oh, well, time to go back to work is totally insensitive.

The New York Police Department, just like our officers all across America, have more pride than that. Give them a break to go through the grieving process and then, you know, we will take a look. But to look at a two-week snapshot is not a good sample pool to be able to make a determination as to whether there's some orchestrated slowdown.

I know cops better than that. I know New York officers better than that. That's not what's going on here.

BALDWIN: Sheriff David Clarke, thank you, sir.

CLARKE: You're very welcome. ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BALDWIN: You are watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin, more breaking news here out of New York. As we were just discussing there with the sheriff out of Wisconsin, police have now arrested three men in a shooting of those two NYPD officers who, as he pointed out, were off- duty.

Initially, one officer was listed in critical condition. But the latest word we have here at CNN is that both men are now stable. But talk about just a tragic start to this new year for this particular police department after a just gut-wrenching ending to 2014.

You know the story about the two officers who were murdered in December for simply being law enforcement. That's according to investigators. But this latest shooting appears to be connected to a crime.

Now, the mayor of New York City is hailing the commitment of the officers who were shot. They had just ended their shifts when this armed robbery call came in. And instead of leaving, instead of going home, these two officers instead joined the search for the suspects.

So, I have got our justice correspondent, Evan Perez, joining me here with more on this.

Before we get to these arrests, what more can you tell me as far as what happened?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, we know that the NYPD is planning a press conference at 4:00 to provide more information about these arrests.

We know they have three men in custody now, three suspects. We don't know what the role of the third suspect. We knew of earlier of two of them. When these two officers arrived on the scene, they saw two suspects that matched the description of the call that went out. And then they started taking fire. These officers were in plainclothes. It's not clear whether these suspects knew that these were police officers.

This is a lot different from the assassination of those two officers in Brooklyn just a couple of weeks ago. These officers were on the job, they were responding to a call. And it's not clear whether they knew that these were cops. However, that doesn't matter. They shot a cop and -- or two cops.

BALDWIN: Two cops.

PEREZ: And so now we have the shooters in custody. The second one checked himself to a hospital because he had gunshot wounds from the officers returning fire. And so he's obviously also under investigation. And we expect some charges forthcoming on that.

And then the third suspect, we're not sure what role he played.

BALDWIN: OK. There was a reward, correct?

PEREZ: There was a reward being offered, $12,000, and, obviously, the picture that was put out, very clear picture, I'm sure helped get tips in as to who this suspect was, who this gunman was. We don't know whether or not the reward money, $12,000, was going to be given to anyone yet. That's something that the NYPD is still looking into.

BALDWIN: OK. Evan Perez, thank you.

PEREZ: Thanks.

BALDWIN: New questions today, new questions about exactly how much the AirAsia pilots knew about the bad weather before that Flight 8501 took off.

But, first, let me just bring you up to speed of the search today because crews have found this. They have found seats, have found life vests and airline safety cards. While the prevailing belief is that most of the victims are strapped to their seats, in the plane's sunken fuselage, search crews did find two more bodies. They were separate from those seats.

Bodies and debris are being picked up by American Warship USS Sampson. And in just a couple of hours from now, that search is set to resume.

I have got CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien joining me now, along with CNN's David Molko, who is following all this from Surabaya, Indonesia, where the flight to Singapore originated.

David, you're there. Let me begin with you. What more do we know about the pilots and this weather briefing?

DAVID MOLKO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Brooke, what we know is we're learning more about how AirAsia pilots obtain their weather information. We don't have exact details about how the pilots of Flight 8501 got their info, but what I can tell you is this right here is the official weather report put out by Indonesia's official weather agency.

This is from the morning of December 28, the day the flight took off. It details cloud cover, temperatures, wind speeds and direction at different altitudes, all the information the crew would need to understand what lay ahead and to make their flight plan and to fly safely.

What we understand from the weather station in Surabaya is that the AirAsia crew did not pick up a paper copy at the station. And, instead, what they did is got the information online. It's caused a little bit of confusion. But our understanding is that the information they could download and then print out and then bring to the cockpits that the airline could was about the same.

But the airline said in a statement, "AirAsia Indonesia receives and disseminates the weather report that comes from the exact same source as the hard copy version made available at the meteorological station." Still, Brooke, a government source here telling CNN that they are looking into how AirAsia obtained the weather information. The other point worth noting is that before the accident, before Flight 8501 went down, pilots for AirAsia would conduct what is known as self- briefings. They'd be handed the information and kind of make their plans on their own in the cockpit.

Now the Indonesian Transport Ministry issuing a directive saying they have to meet with a flight operations officer and have a face-to-face briefing -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK. David, thank you.

Miles O'Brien, I'm glad you're with me because David just threw a lot out at this, first being the issue of not actually physically picking up the weather documentation, but having it e-mailed to you. I talked to a 747 pilot a second ago and he said it shouldn't matter either way. And then the last bit about being briefed in person or not, what's your read on all of this?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, I think we all could agree it seems a little bit silly. And it doesn't necessarily make things safer to require the flight crew walk down a hall and meet face to face with the weather officer before they go on a flight. That's -- we all know that's not safe in and of itself.

However, if that is the rule and the airline was simply ignored --

BALDWIN: Miles, forgive me. I see the microphone on you, but I'm hearing you kind of sort of. So we're going to work on your mike, because I want to hear what you're saying exactly. Quick break. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: And we have him back. I love live TV, Miles O'Brien. You know the drill.

CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien with me with a functioning microphone.

Let me take two. We were talking about the issue about these pilots, these AirAsia pilots not physically picking up the weather documentation before hopping on this plane, but rather getting it via e-mail. And I think you were saying something along the lines of, this is just silly.

O'BRIEN: Yes.

You know, do they require carrier pigeons or something? It obviously doesn't make things safer to physically go down the hall and receive this personal briefing. Having said that, the point I would like to make about this and I think the important point to take away for all of us is if, in fact, that was the rule, and the airline was somehow ignoring the rule, just doing its own way of doing business, that represents a culture that we might want to pay some attention to. Aviation rules are written in blood. That's the term we use. And you

may think they're stupid, but you follow them for good reasons. There usually is a reason behind them. And so if an airline is ignoring them and playing by its own set of rules, that could be a contributing factor to what we're seeing here.

BALDWIN: OK.

As you would say, I'm putting that other new nugget sort of up on my proverbial cork board of things that paint this puzzle. The other bit, actually, Miles, we're just getting word that at least one of the locator pingers, one of the batteries on one of these AirAsia black boxes was recently replaced.

So that has to be a -- that's a good thing.

O'BRIEN: That is good news. And the weather conditions and everything else has made it very difficult for them to hear anything there. One of the concerns we all would have is if the battery failed, that raises the odds that the thing is working.

Let's hope we hear something soon.

BALDWIN: All right. Miles O'Brien, thank you.

O'BRIEN: You're welcome.

BALDWIN: All right, let's move along because we have got some more breaking news for you. The former Republican governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, has now been sentenced to two years in prison, two, following his conviction last September on federal corruption charges.

His attorneys have signaled they will appeal. Both McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were found guilty of trying to cash in on the governor's office. A judge just handed down the prison sentence to the former governor, rejecting the prosecution's request for a minimum 10-year sentence. So, as we mentioned, he's getting two.

But let's go back. At the center of this whole scandal was this man, businessman Jonnie Williams seen here with Maureen McDonnell. Prosecutors say the governor and his wife got about $177,000 in loans and vacations and gifts and other valuables from Williams in exchange for political favors. To be more specific, some of those gifts include Louis Vuitton designer shoes, and clothes, and iPhones and golf clubs. You get the picture.

Former lobbyist Jack Abramoff spent three years in prison for corruption. He is good enough to join me now.

Jack, nice to see you again.

JACK ABRAMOFF, SERVED THREE YEARS FOR CORRUPTION: Thank you, Brooke. Good to be here.

BALDWIN: Here you have it, the two years, that's the news that's just come down. I think you had told one of my colleagues here at CNN, you know, as far as these prisons go, that, you know, these inmates can pick out a phony. They know who is lying, who is a B.S. artist. Now that we know he's going in for two, what's your one piece of advice for him?

ABRAMOFF: Well, again, to be humble and to be honest and keep your head down.

Two years is terrible for him and his family. I remember when my sentence came down, whatever amount of time you get in prison is terrible. But the truth is, it could have been a lot worse. I think the judge was relatively fair to him. The prosecutors were asking for 10 years. I think that was egregious. But when he goes in there, he's going to wind up spending, depending on where he goes, somewhere between 15 and 18 months in the prison.

And at that time, he will basically be one of the inmates. He needs to keep his head down, be humble and just try to get along with everybody.

BALDWIN: What are these other inmates like who will be with him? And do you think his status as a former governor will help him and his reputation help him behind bars or will it hurt him?

ABRAMOFF: I don't think it'll matter, actually to the inmates. The inmates see all kinds of people come in. Most of the inmates in federal prison in a minimum security, 90 percent of them are drug dealers, inner-city drug dealers often. And they're not necessarily impressed with the fact somebody's a governor. But I don't think they will hold it against him that he was a member of the government.

It depends entirely on how he acts in the prison. If he's somebody who is able to get along with people and able to, again, be humble and be understated, I think he will be fine. He will be able to get through the time with no problem.

BALDWIN: You mentioned some of these hard drug dealers. If we're talking about someone such as yourself or, you know, a former governor of Virginia, I'm wondering what the prison population is like, what sort of perks he may get maybe that you got or not at all.

ABRAMOFF: No, I think it will be, unfortunately, the opposite likely. There really aren't any perks there to begin with. I mean, all the federal prisons basically are the same. There's no white-collar prison. And, again, he will be in mainly with people who are drug dealers, which is the majority of the federal prisoners.

I don't think, necessarily, they will mistreat him, either they or the staff. It depends entirely, again, on him. But he won't get any -- certainly any benefits. He may wind up with a worse job in prison because he's a governor and some staff member decides they want to show him. That kind of thing is possible. But, otherwise, again, it's entirely up to how he approaches it.

BALDWIN: Attitude, huh? Attitude, two years in federal prison. Jack Abramoff, thank you.

ABRAMOFF: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, a grand jury from the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri, wants to speak out, is suing in order to do so. We will talk to Nancy Grace, get her take on all of this.

Plus, protesters over Brown's death and others have taken a new approach. You seen this? They're interrupting lunch. But here's the response from a former police officer to that. We will hear directly from him coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret,behind closed doors, never to be released. And grand jurors, by law, are never, ever allowed to talk about what they saw, what they heard.

So it's a bit of a shock that one of these grand jurors in Ferguson, Missouri, is actually suing the Saint Louis prosecutor, Bob McCulloch, for the right to speak out about the experience.

This unnamed juror being represented by the ACLU alleges the public has been misled about what happened inside of that grand jury room, which resulted, as you well know, in officer Darren Wilson not being indicted in the shooting death of Michael Brown.

So, we go to HLN's Nancy Grace for more on this.

And I definitely want to hear your take on this. But my first question, actually, before we get into should he or she be able to speak, or not, what do you think? What is your gut? What do you think the real motivation is here for this individual?

NANCY GRACE, HOST, "NANCY GRACE": Well, I think it could be one of two things. Either, one, they want to jump on the bandwagon and be part of the story themselves. You have always got to look at whether someone is trying for pecuniary or monetary gain.

It could be fame, it could be money, it could be an interview with a tabloid or a legitimate magazine. It could be any number of things. I mean, it's gotten out who the grand jurors actually are. It could be that. Or it could be something else. The motivation could very well be that now that the grand juror has seen all the reports, has heard a lot of evidence they may not have heard in the grand jury room, they realize that something very hinky was going on in that grand jury room, to put it in street terms.

They see a dichotomy between what they are learning now and what they learned in the jury room.

BALDWIN: OK. So, hinky or not, Nancy Grace, we know that this -- when you read what this grand juror's lawyer says --

GRACE: I knew you would go with hinky vs. dichotomy. I just want to put that out there.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: I know what you're saying. I know what you're saying.

If we're saying that this lawyer says the prosecutor, Bob McCulloch here, implied that all of the jurors, all of them were against any charges against Wilson and saying, you know what, that's not accurate, do you think that's enough of an argument to yank the gag order?

GRACE: Well, I notice in their complaint, which I have got here -- and they refer to themselves as Grand Juror Doe -- they cite to a Supreme Court Butterworth vs. Smith, where a witness got to speak on what happened inside the secret grand jury proceedings.

There's a big difference in a witness exercising their First Amendment right to free speech, which is the ruling precedent in that case, in Butterworth vs. a juror. But let's look at other juries, not just grand juries. Very often, you hear jurors, petit jurors, jurors of 12, that hear trials, they speak out, they write books, they go on TV, they have press conferences. They do it.

BALDWIN: This is totally different.

GRACE: Yes, it is. This is a grand jury.

Now, why is there a difference? In a grand jury, the jury is allowed to hear evidence a regular juror would never hear. They hear hearsay. They hear he said/she said, he said/she said four ways down. They hear from confidential informants, a lot of information that must be kept confidential for a lot of different reasons, like the C.I.

The confidential informant has got to be kept secret to save his or her life. That's why we have secrecy.

BALDWIN: So then, in all your years as a prosecutor, I mean, have you ever heard of a grand juror filing suit?

GRACE: I have never heard in all my years. And I worked -- all the 10 years I prosecuted, I very often pulled grand jury duty. I mean, everybody in our office did. You had 100 lawyers. We all presented to the grand jury all the time.

So I have never heard of a grand juror speaking out against the district attorney or filing suit. Now, here's a reason they may win.

BALDWIN: Do you think they should win, as you answer that?

GRACE: I think typically secrecy must be enforced for the grand jury to protect witnesses. However, if a showing can be made that there was wrongdoing -- let me make a comparison for you.

The husband-wife privilege in court, the marital privilege, that cannot be pierced unless it's a case about marital or child abuse or a crime. So if the privilege or the secrecy is being used to shroud or cover up wrongdoing, then that privilege blows up. And that's what I think should happen here.

If this grand juror can make a showing in camera, which is behind closed doors to the judge, that wrongdoing of some sort has taken place or even an impropriety, then, in my mind, that blows up the secrecy.

BALDWIN: OK.

We will find out, up to a judge. Nancy Grace, thank you, ma'am.

GRACE: Thank you.

BALDWIN: "NANCY GRACE" tonight and weeknights 8:00 p.m. on HLN.

Also just in here, President Obama speaking today about the new 114th Congress. Right? We saw at the top of the last hour the speaker, John Boehner, being sworn in. So, here you have it. Now they're all, Senate, House, controlled by Republican Party. The president is scheduled to meet with congressional leaders next Tuesday. Here's the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want to congratulate them once again on their positions as speaker and majority leader in the Senate.

And I'm very much looking forward to working with them. Already had a chance to say happy new year to them. And I'm confident that there are going to be areas where we disagree and there will be some pitched battles.

But I'm also confident that there are enormous areas of potential agreement that would deliver for the American people, and we just have to make sure that we focus on those areas where we can make significant progress together. So, I wish them well. I wish them well, and I think we're going to actually have, hopefully, a productive 2015.

All right?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: We can tell you that earlier today the White House did say that President Obama would veto a Keystone pipeline bill if passed by Congress.

It took rescuers almost an hour to find two young skiers buried under this mountain of snow. They apparently were not wearing special gear designed specifically for avalanches. And that is precisely what happened. Next, we will talk to an expert about why some did make it out alive.

And CNN goes into the woods of Kentucky, retraces the steps of that 7- year-old girl who survived the plane crash that killed her family and then managed to walk nearly a mile through those woods in the dark in the cold to safety. We will show you exactly what she had to endure.

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