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Gunman Opens Fire on Group Near Pub in Tel Aviv; State Department Releases New Clinton Emails; Emails: Chicago City Hall Managed Info on Fatal Shooting; Judge: Cosby's Wife Must Testify in Defamation Case. Aired 11:30-12p ET

Aired January 01, 2016 - 11:30   ET

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


JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, if you say 70 percent of the buildings have similar cladding. And again, it's early in the investigation, that would certainly be something to be addressed.

[11:30:02] Glenn Corbett, fascinating really information. Thank you for coming on.

GLENN CORBETT, JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE: Thank you, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Back to our breaking news right now. Right now, Israeli authorities are trying to figure out the nature of a deadly attack in Tel Aviv. Surveillance video shows the horrifying video under way. You see the gunman there highlighted in amateur video as he opened fire just outside a pub in Tel Aviv. Two people killed, four people seriously injured.

A manhunt is now under way for the shooter. He got away. They're still looking for him.

A question right now is, was this a random act of violent crime? Was it criminal or was it an act of terrorism?

CNN's Ian Lee in Jerusalem this morning with the latest.

And, Ian, authorities just don't know yet, do they?

IAN LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jim. That's one of the two really big questions right now that they're looking into, is where is this gunman? Who is this gunman? Also, was this a terrorist attack or was this criminal?

And really this investigation hinges on determining if it was a terrorist attack or criminal, the police will then go about their investigation in different directions. But they're looking at this amateur video of the CCTV video of what happens.

You can see before the attack took place, there is a -- the gunman is in a supermarket looking at produce. He gathers some, puts it back. Goes on and off screen. Then eventually puts his bag down on some shopping carts at the entrance. He pulls out the gun. He starts shooting everyone in this pub on the sidewalk, takes off running but he leaves that bag behind. That's going to be helpful for authorities as they investigate it.

Trying to get any clues off this bag to determine what the cause -- what the motive behind this attack is. But right now, police are telling residents in Tel Aviv to go about their normal lives, to be extra alert.

But really we have this massive manhunt under way, looking for this gunman, trying to capture him before he either escapes or something else happens, Jim.

SCIUTTO: And reports as well he left ammunition magazine behind as well. That, of course, a key clue. Ian Lee in Jerusalem, thank you for joining us.

There is mounting trouble in Chicago. Newly released e-mail shows the mayor's office and investigators coordinated their response to the deadly police shooting of the teenager Laquan McDonald. Up next, details on what those e-mails reveal.

Plus, Bill Cosby's wife may have to testify against her husband next week. This as Cosby breaks his silence. First, details on his first public comments since being arrested for sexual assault.

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[11:36:12] SCIUTTO: Welcome back.

The State Department wrapped up 2015 by dropping 5,500 pages of Hillary Clinton's e-mails from her secretary of state days. The timing, of course, not accidental. But 8,000 pages were expected and the timing of the release being slammed by Republican front-runner, Donald Trump.

All of her work e-mails have been ordered release as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

CNN's Chris Frates joins us now with more details.

So, Chris, I've been looking through these emails as well. Some interesting highlights in there. I mean, relating to things from -- everything from a viral photo to who gets to ride in the car with Hillary Clinton.

CHRIS FRATES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, a little bit of slice of life about what it's like to be the secretary of state in these 5,500 pages. And as we pointed out, the 5,500 were fewer than the expected 8,000 pages expected to come out. The State Department saying the holidays and just the sheer number of documents involved left it short of its goal. The department pledged however to release more emails next week.

Now, this latest batch of e-mails is part of thousands of pages the judge ordered the State Department to release. Remember, this all goes back to the fact that Clinton did government business from an e- mail server kept in her home. And that was the disclosure that sparked a political firestorm last year. And the e-mails that came out yesterday, they included 275 that have

been upgraded to classified. Now, none of those e-mails were classified when they were sent or received. That's a point Clinton has made repeatedly on the campaign trail, largely because Republicans have attacked Clinton for sending these now classified e-mails from a private server. They argue it endangered national security.

The e-mails released Thursday, as we were saying, they provide a little window into Clinton's inner circle. In one email, an aide made an irreverent flow chart of who gets to ride with Clinton in her secret service SUV.

In another, she asks aides to correct the record after a, quote, "ridiculous column reported a number of times cabinet members had visited the White House. She says, please go through my schedules and counted my visits to refute this. You know, apparently she was concerned that her visits had been undercounted.

In another exchange, Clinton and the senior aide, they seemed to mock at American citizens stuck in Egypt after the embassy closed. A woman stranded on the river cruise ship told CNN the U.S. government's response was grossly insufficient. Clinton agrees with the aide's suggestion that the State Department send out a good communications department. But she adds, why is being on a cruise ship a dangerous or difficult situation?

And then, Jim, there was the e-mail alerting Clinton to that now famous photo of her, the one where she's wearing sunglasses and checking her BlackBerry, aides telling her that photo had started to go viral. Clinton asks, "Why now? That was on the way to Libya", to which her chief of staff simply says, "You look cute."

So, you know, Clinton embraced that text from Hillary meme but opponents later used that photo to cast her in a pretty negative light when that email controversy erupted.

So, you had 5,000 pages come out yesterday, Jim. A little glimpse behind the scenes of what it's like to be secretary of state.

SCIUTTO: So, a lot of inside baseball stuff here, just quickly, and I know it's early, a lot to delve through, but anything politically damaging in these e-mails?

FRATES: There's nothing hugely politically damaging here. There was an e-mail from an adviser of hers, a long-time pollster, Mark Penn, that when President Obama got caught on a live mike talking to the Russian president saying, "I'll have more room to maneuver after the election," Mark Penn suggested, maybe you should think about distancing yourself from that or maybe you need to get out of that situation.

So, there's some political back and forth and you get a little bit behind the curtain of what she -- how she was being advised, Jim, but nothing that's going to be hugely politically damaging we found just yet.

[11:40:03] SCIUTTO: All right. Chris Frates, thanks for looking through all of it for us.

A New Year and a new staff for Ben Carson. Three of the Republican presidential candidates and one-time front-runner's top advisers bailed on his campaign yesterday, with the first votes of that election just one month away. Carson has been struggling in the polls recently as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have seen their fortunes rise.

CNN political reporter Sara Murray has more details on the changes in the Carson camp. Also with us is Jennifer Rubin. She's with "The Washington Post" "Right Turn" blog.

So, Sara, what's going to be the fallout of these campaign departures?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, it's been kind of interesting to see because Ben Carson forecast he was going to have a campaign shakeup and then walked it back. These aides end up leaving anyway. So, I don't think we should necessarily be surprised to see the departure in the wake of Ben forecasting this himself.

But I do think this puts the campaign in rocky footing heading into the New Year, just weeks out from the Iowa caucus and the challenge is going to be, OK, can you get past this shakeup and buckle down, turn out the ground game and keep meeting with voters and sort of try to turn around the first steps that Ben Carson really isn't ready for prime time. He's not ready to be president.

And there still, you know, weeks until Iowa. Still possible you could do that on the ground. But, of course, right now, Ben Carson's poll numbers are moving in the wrong direction.

SCIUTTO: So, Jennifer, I spoke with Armstrong Williams yesterday. He's close adviser of Ben Carson. He's, in effect, the guy on the other side of this intra-campaign battle, the other side of the folks who decided to leave the campaign yesterday. In that interview he said Carson is the only authentic evangelical in the race.

How do you think the other candidates are going to respond to that claim?

JENNIFER RUBIN, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, we have Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz both making a very strong pitch for the evangelical crowd. Let's not forget there's Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, also very popular with so-called value voters.

So, I think he had a special place in the heart of many of those voters, however. I do agree with that. I think, however, his campaign was probably did even before this last episode, he's really been plummeting in the polls, CNN's polls, other polls that are out there. I think this just confirms that maybe the presidential race and the whole process of running for president was not something that was really in his wheelhouse.

SCIUTTO: Sara, Jennifer, thanks for walking us through it all. Appreciate it.

Tune in at 1:00 p.m. Eastern today, we'll talk live with Ben Carson's new campaign, Major General Robert Dees. That's at 1:00 Eastern right here on CNN.

In Chicago now, possible trouble for embattled Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Thousands of newly released e-mails by city official show police fear of the shooting of Laquan McDonald would become an explosive political issue. The e-mails also show that the city attempted to control the official statements about the shooting and expressed concern for potential unrest if video of that shooting became public. Remember, it took nearly a year for that video to come out.

CNN's Rosa Flores joining us now live from Chicago.

Rosa, smoking gun in here? Because there's been a lot whip of politics around this and charges that Rahm Emanuel delayed the release of this video to help his political fortunes as he ran for re- election. Do we see some proof of that kind of background play?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, no smoking gun yet. Let me give you the background. CNN requested all e-mails received and written by the mayor regarding the Laquan McDonald case. Now, like you mentioned, we received hundreds of e-mails and thousands of pages.

So, we're still going through those e-mails. We do know that the mayor is referred to in those e-mails as MRE, REMC (ph), that's how a lot of his staffers refer to him in these e-mails.

Now, to give you the broad overview, the bulk of the communication here is about the message, how to handle the message. A lot of these e-mails are between staffers in the communication department and the law department, trying to figure out what message to put out. This is after the shooting of the -- of Laquan McDonald, before the release of the video, before and after the indictment of the police officer involved.

But let's talk about one particular e-mail just to give you a sense. Now, here's the timeline. This is before the Laquan McDonald shooting video was released. There's an attorney who has worked with the city and he sent this e-mail to one of the mayor's top staffers.

I'm going to quote here. It says, "I'm concerned that the city may erupt when and if the video gets out." Again, this is Laquan McDonald shooting video that shows Laquan McDonald being shot and killed by a police officer.

[11:45:05] I'm going to continue here. "What if the mayor and some community leaders such as Father Pfleger lead a peaceful demonstration with 100 plus African-American youth wearing red mortar boards to symbolize education as a solution while also invoking the image of Laquan McDonald in a positive manner."

Now, we do know a lot of protests did happen. We covered these protests for weeks.

Now, here's the statement from the city of Chicago I received this morning. And it reads, "We made the decision to release e-mails from the mayor's office, the law department and top officials in the police department in the interest of transparency and being as open as possible. We even opted to waive the right to withhold attorney/client privileged discussions, meaning hundreds of e-mails which otherwise would not have been produced have now been made public."

Now, here's the background: Laquan McDonald is a 17-year-old who was shot and killed by Officer Jason Van Dyke on October 20th of 2014. Now, after that, we all know the story, it took a year for the release of that video to go public. After that, we know that there were a lot of protests. The mayor asked the head of the independent police bureau review to step down. He asked the Chicago police department head to also step down.

So, Jim, there's a lot of different things that were happening behind the scenes. These e-mails give us a sense of what was happening.

SCIUTTO: No question. Rosa Flores, thank you, and for your part in getting them released.

Coming up now, Bill Cosby breaks his silence with a New Year's Eve message, just 48 hours after his being charged with sexual assault. Cosby's public comment comes as a judge now forcing his wife to be interviewed under oath.

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SCIUTTO: New this morning, a federal judge in Massachusetts has ruled that Camille Cosby will have to testify in a defamation lawsuit against her husband, Bill Cosby. That is in connection with the sexual assault lawsuit filed by seven women.

Meanwhile, the actor finally broke his silence after facing sexual assault charges in the Andrea Constand case. He tweeted, "Friends and fans, thank you".

But some celebrities were quick to slam him right back on twitter. Lena Dunham tweeted, "If I believed in hell, Bill Cosby would be going there." And comedian Arsenio Hall said, "When I was a kid and you heard the word 'Cosby' and 'booking', it was a reference to him doing stand up in Cleveland."

I want to bring back Eric Guster, criminal trial attorney and Darren Kavinoky, he's a criminal defense attorney.

So, Eric and Darren -- Eric, if I could begin with you, for more clarification. The significance of requiring Camille Cosby to testify, actually the significance and really the rarity, I'm curious, to testify against her husband. And to be clear, this is not in the sexual assault case, this is in the defamation case, a separate one, tied to the same charges, but not the same case.

How rare is that and how significant is that do you think?

ERIC GUSTER, CRIMINAL & CIVIL TRIAL ATTORNEY: Jim, it's actually not very rare at all. We handle a lot of civil case, and one person who also knows is the wife. The wife knows everything that is going on, and under examination in depositions where the wife has to raise her right hand, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, they will crack under pressure, and actually start to admitting to things that possibly the husband did not say, because one thing about depositions that is so powerful on the defense side is -- on the plaintiff's side is that getting them to make statements that are not the same.

If Bill Cosby said one thing and his wife says another, then you have contradicting statements which is extremely relevant in the trial, and extremely powerful to reach a settlement in the case.

SCIUTTO: And to be clear, though, you cannot require a wife to testify against a husband in a criminal case, is that the right? Do I have that right?

GUSTER: Yes, that is right. Under some circumstance, but there are a few exceptions and on the civil side, it is a business manager which opens up a whole different can of worms in this case. She is his business manager, she manages affairs and this is about who is telling the truth and who's telling a lie, and it is going to be coming down to that and the Cosbys are in a lot of trouble on this particular side of it.

I do think that he has a decent chance of winning the criminal case, but the civil case, he may have some serious issues.

SCIUTTO: So, Darren, I want to ask you, this latest criminal case, this first criminal case, is based on the deposition from a number of years ago that was released a number of years ago in July that he acknowledged that he was using drugs to help women have sex with him in effect. I want to play a clip, this is from some 20 years ago of Bill Cosby interviewed with Larry King where he talks about using a drug known as "Spanish fly" at the time, back when he was a young man.

Let's listen to it. I want to get your reaction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY KING, CNN HOST: You knew what it was?

BILL COSBY, COMEDIAN: Spanish fly was the thing that all boys from age 11 to death.

We will be searching for Spanish fly. And what was the old -- the old story was if you took a little drop, it was the head of the pin, and put it in.

KING: And Coca-Cola, and it won't make any difference.

COSBY: And the girl would drink it and then hello, America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: And, Darren, I mean, uncomfortable to the say the least to see those comments with the laugh and a smile. In a case like this, are the past statements about using something like this, are they irrelevant? Can they be used saying this guy has been talking about this for 20 years?

GUSTER: Right. Well, and let's remember, when we're putting it in the context of the criminal case, Bill Cosby won't be on trial for being a scum bag or the devil incarnate or whatever people may think about him, what the prosecution is going to have to prove in that criminal case is that Bill Cosby drugged and took advantage of a woman on a particular date at a particular time.

And certainly, these kinds of statements, they make Cosby look horrible. And as a trial lawyer, if you are defending Cosby, you've got to just grimace when you think about the prospect of this kinds of statements being admitted in evidence.

The problem that I think the prosecution ultimately has, though, in the criminal case is that criminal cases don't get better with age, and that criminal case was thorough vetted and reviewed by the district attorney's office, what, a decade ago?

[11:55:04] I think that the hurdle that they really have, the practical hurdle is what has now happened in this intervening decade that makes it more likely that they are going to be able to successfully secure a prosecution about the events of a particular night. I'm not sure that this sort of generalized smearing of the Cosby's reputation is going to help them if the defense is able to keep the jurors focused on that very narrow issue. That's ultimately going to be the challenge.

SCIUTTO: Darren, just briefly, so I understand this, and our viewers understand it from the legal standpoint. If you are using a drug, and you admit that you are using that drug to help a woman have sex with you, is that, does that the legally constitute sexual assault? I know, listen, this is to be argued in the case of court, but if you are in effect using something to be taking away her ability to have judgment, I suppose, does that meet that standard legally?

KAVINOKY: So generally speaking, any words or actions of a criminal defendant are potentially admissible as what's called the admission, and so anything that Cosby said can generally come in, whether or not that statement or any statements is relevant to his conduct on a particular night is going to be the question for the judge as the gatekeeper of the evidence to decide whether it comes in, and ultimately, that's going to be one for the jurors to decide.

But generally speaking, if it is a statement that Cosby made, it's likely to come in and it's relevant to come in at that trial.

SCIUTTO: All right. Eric and Darren, thank you for your advice and analysis on this.

Coming up next, more on the breaking news. A gunman opens up fire at a pub in Tel Aviv, and two people are dead. A manhunt is under way.

Stay with us.

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