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Clinton Talks National Security; News Conference on Orlando Shooting. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired June 15, 2016 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00:] HILLARY CLINTON, (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: It is a sacrifice to try to keep safe. We have to be right 100 percent of the time. The terrorist only has to be right once. So the burden on our law enforcement, our intelligence professionals, and our military is enormous. You deserve a commander- in-chief who will provide smart, steady leadership, someone who does understand we are stronger when we stand together, stand together as Americans, stand together with our allies around the world to keep us safe. We truly are stronger together.

And I'm looking forward to hearing from our panelists. And perhaps, if we have time, others, about ideas, observations, questions you might have about how we do this, what are the best ways we keep faith with our military and military families, what are the best ways to prepare, our country to be protected, go after these lone wolves. It's very hard. As one of our law enforcement professionals said the other day, we truly are looking for the needle in the proverbial global hay stack, and we're also looking to see whether any pieces of hay can ignite at the same time. So I do not underestimate the extent of the challenge we face, but I am absolutely confident that we can keep our country safe. And I am sure if we work together and make this, not a Republican or Democrat debate, but an American mission, that is exactly what we will do together.

Thank you all very much.

(APPLAUSE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Again, thank you all for being here.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. There is Hillary Clinton making a different approach to national security than we just heard moments ago from Donald Trump. Two very, very different approaches.

Let's assess this situation. CNN's chief political analyst, Gloria Borger, joins us; David Gregory, our political analyst, the host of "The David Gregory Show" podcast; Jackie Kucinich, the Washington bureau chief for "The Daily Beast"; and Peter Bergen, our CNN national security analyst.

Doesn't get more different than two presumptive presidential nominees outline their response to what happened in Orlando.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: No. You know, we saw Hillary Clinton do as she's done before, her solutions. How she'll establish a task force but she did call Trump dangerous, which we've also heard from her before. And what we heard from Trump is the Democrats don't know what they're doing. They're sitting on their hands. No progress against ISIS, standing behind his ban, his regional ban, not his religious ban, but regional ban. But they have completely different ways to handle this. It couldn't be more stark.

BLITZER: Hold on, guys, for a moment.

There's a police news conference that's just beginning in Orlando, the latest on the investigation into the terrorist attack at that Pulse nightclub. Let's listen in.

RON HOPPER, FBI ASSISTANT SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE: -- Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer. I'd like to thank all of my partners standing here with me today and many others who come from all over the nation to assist us in investigating this terrible attack on our community. The level of cooperation and partnership we've seen has been phenomenal and the last several days have been completely overwhelming. We continue to stand shoulder to shoulder to investigate this horrific attack.

We wanted to take the time and give you an update on what we're doing, and again, ask for your help in certain areas of the investigation. Because this is an ongoing investigation, there's still much I cannot share with you. So I'd ask for your patience, and when I tell you there are certain things I just cannot discuss at this time.

We continue to cover many leads and want to make sure that we share information, that when we share it with you, it's not only timely but that it is accurate. We owe it to the victims and families, loved ones, and the community to bear witness with finite accuracy. The FBI's office of Victim Assistance in highly experienced team working together with the city of Orlando and many of our state and local counterparts and community agencies to provide resources and support victims, the next of kin and loved ones at the Family Assistance Center. And we have recently moved the family assistance center, so I'd like to share it with you where it's located. It's at the Camping World Stadium. It's open from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., Wednesday through Friday, and 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, and noon to 8:00 p.m. on Sunday. And for more information regarding that, I would ask you to please visit FBI.gov/Orlandovictims. All one word.

[13:35:31] There have been media reports about alleged threats or attacks on members of religious or ethnic communities that could be perceived to be in response to the shooting at the Pulse. Let me be beyond clear on that point. Civil rights violations are a priority for the FBI. But we will investigate reported incidents against individuals based upon any class, any protected class to include race, religion, and sexual orientation. Any known threats or incidents should be reported to your local FBI office or local law enforcement agencies.

Let me tell you a little bit about where we are today in the investigation. The team remains at the Pulse and we continue to process the crime scene. You might imagine, this is a methodical time, time sensitive work that includes trajectory analysis and crime scene mapping. It's imperative that we get this right. We are committed to staying here as long as it takes to carefully process the vast crime scene. I will tell you that efforts are under way to reduce our footprint in an attempt to have the city return to some sense of normalcy. We're doing our best to work as efficiently and as effectively as possible, but remember, our goal is to remain the integrity of the crime scene and the evidence that we collect.

We continue to seek and follow all leads about the activities and associates of the shooter, Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, who like the director, I will not mention his name again. We need your help in developing the most complete picture of what the shooter did and why he did it. The FBI has placed a "seeking information" poster on our website at FBI.gov that includes photos and additional information about the shooter. We want to hear from any member of the public who has had any connection or involvement with or any information about the shooter.

No matter how big or small you think that information may be, as in the plea I asked from this investigation, we want to hear from you. You have come through for me and I appreciate that. We have received volumes of information and leads and tips we are following up and continue to follow up on. But regardless of how small that information may be, I still want to hear about it. The FBI stands ready to receive your information. Please do so by continuing to call FBI -- 1-800-call-FBI, or submitting us a tip online at tips.FBI.gov.

Again, we ask anyone who may have had contact with the shooter to report that information to the FBI. No piece of information is too small and no piece of information will not be kept confidential. You have our assurance we'll keep your information confidential. We need those tips to continue coming.

As I said before, this investigation is ongoing. We're not able to provide additional information at this time. Investigations are deliberate by their very nature and that's because we want to able to tell you what happened in a thorough and accurate way but realize that will take some time. I ask for your patience as we go about our work. We will continue to keep you informed of our progress and we will continue to have these briefings as information dictates and we are able to share that with the entire community.

Once again, I'd like to thank our partner agencies that most of all, I want to thank the Orlando community. Your courage, compassion, and resilience in the face of a great tragedy are an inspiration to us all. Orlando Strong.

Before I depart and turn it overt to Chief John Mina, I would like to remind you of two sites that I hope the public takes advantage of, the first one being FBI.gov/Orlandovictims. That has information about the Family Assistance Center and things that the FBI and your local community can do to help you if you are a victim or a loved one of the victims.

If you have any questions about any of the vehicles that had to be abandoned as a result of the crime seen, we have set up a 1-800--- sorry, a phone number at 407-246-help or 246-4357. If we're not able to release that vehicle to you at this time, we'll provide you with information and what you need to do to take possession of that vehicle.

And now I'll turn it over to Police Chief John Mina.

[13:40:37] JOHN MINA, CHIEF, ORLANDO POLICE DEPARTMENT: Good afternoon. Many of you, many people from the public have asked how our officers are doing, especially the first responders that night. Our -- about yesterday, 300 or 400 officers came to a critical stress management debriefing. The purpose was for the officers to talk about how they are feeling, to vent to their peers, and to talk about their experience to help them cope and deal with this tragic situation. So after the main group talked for a bit and were given some instructions by some trained counselors, they all broke out into classrooms and groups of 10 or 15 and had more sessions with trained counselors to talk about their circumstances, their experiences, and how they're feeling and how to deal with the management of the stress of responding to such a tragic incident.

So this morning, we did the exact same thing with our squad team. All the members who responded, including the officers who were involved in the shooting, and I could tell you, these were some of the most courageous and toughest men I know, men who have seen things, murders, homicides, unfortunately, dead infants, car crashes. But no one can prepare you for what the officers encountered that night. They stood toe to toe, went face to face with a mass murderer and performed heroically and courageously, and I'm extremely, extremely proud of them. So after all those stress debriefings take place, we're going to offer free counseling continuing to those officers. Several agencies have come forward to offer counseling to make sure our officers are dealing with that correctly.

Now, I want to talk about media contacting those officers who have been involved in the shooting. As per our policy and procedure, those officers involved in the shooting are relieved of duty and are prohibited from talking about the shooting or the investigation or any of the circumstances. So I cannot stress this enough, do not attempt to contact those officers. They will not talk to you. They are prohibited from talking to you by our policies and also by law.

So please do not contact them. They will also not talk about the investigation, the federal investigation, and they will not compromise this investigation. And, honestly, I will tell you that there have been some aggressive media outlets that have gone to our officers homes, have called parents out of state, have posted pictures. We're stressing to let these officers deal with this situation that they have to deal with that night. Let them be with their families and let them heal without bothering. Like I said, they cannot talk about the investigation. So we would appreciate your cooperation in this matter.

And now I'm going to turn it over to the U.S. attorney.

LEE BENTLEY, U.S. ATTORNEY, MIDDLE DISTRICT OF FLORIDA: Good afternoon. I'm Lee Bentley, the United States attorney for the middle district of Florida.

The last three and a half days have been extremely difficult for me personally, for my office, for the Department of Justice, and for our law enforcement officers. Like you, and the city of Orlando, we're grieving for the 49 victims of the horrific attack at the Pulse nightclub. But while grieving, we're continuing to investigate the crime that occurred and all of the facts and circumstances that led up to that.

Today, I am not going to speculate with respect to any charges that might be brought or, indeed, as to whether any charges will be brought. It's premature to do so. I'm not going to speculate today as to any charges that may be brought or, indeed, about whether any charges will be brought in this case. It is premature to do so. It would interfere and hamper the investigation to put out premature information about where the investigation is headed. I can assure you it will be a full and complete investigation and the facts will be known to the public, made known to the public at the appropriate time.

[13:45:35] Assistant special agent in charge, Ron Hopper, made a comment about the threats made to the members of the Muslim community. Making these threats is not only wrong, in most cases, making these threats is illegal. Stop it. Any threats like this detract from what we're doing in law enforcement. We want to spend 100 percent of our time investigating the crime that occurred in the Pulse nightclub and the facts leading up to it. Don't distract us from what we need to be doing. And I say to anyone out there who's made such a threat or is considering making such a threat, grieve with us, grieve with the victims of the nightclub shooting with the same solemnity we're doing and with which it deserves.

I'd like to thank all of our federal, state, and local law enforcement officers. Obviously, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, ATF, Homeland Security, and even DEA have been involved in this investigation. Our state partners have been wonderful, starting with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the city of Orlando Police Department, the Orange County Sheriff's Office.

And of course, the state prosecutors are investigating as well, the statewide prosecutor as well as the Orange County state attorney. I would also like to thank my colleagues at the Department of Justice. I've spoken regularly to the deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, and to our attorney general, Loretta Lynch. In fact, I'll be speaking again to the attorney general shortly after this press conference. I cannot express to you how concerned the attorney general and everyone else in the Department of Justice is about the victims in this case. And they are devoting all of their attentions to this investigation.

Now I'd like to turn it over to a number of our elected officials who are going to speak. I'd like to tell you that you've seen a number of our officials here on scene. Every one of them has tried to assist in the investigation and have had only one question, what can we do to help? They obviously have some remarks to make to the communities they serve, to the state they serve. Please respect them by not asking them specific questions about the facts of this investigation.

And now, I'm going to turn it over to Florida governor, Rick Scott. Thank you. RICK SCOTT, (R), FLORIDA GOVERNOR: First, I want to thank the

federal, state and local law enforcement. They have done an outstanding job. It starts with the individuals that showed up at gay nightclub, Pulse, and were willing to risk their lives to save people they had never met before and maybe never will meet again. I also want to thank the entire Orlando community and, truthfully, the world. Everybody has shown up to say, how can they be helpful? Mayor Jacobs and Mayor Dyer have been here relentlessly seeing what they can do to be helpful.

I've had the opportunity to talk to members that lost their loved ones, h have family members that have struggled for their life, still going through surgery. I've had to cry with the lady that recounted the story of the last time she talked to her son and the story of how he bled to death. I talked to a young man that had gunshot wounds but he was only concerned with how he got back to work. But this was all people just like us. This was clearly an attack on our gay community, it was an attack on our Hispanic community, an attack on Orlando, it's a terror attack on our nation, it's clearly a terror attack on our way of life. Our city, our state, our nation is going to come back together. I want to thank all of you that have called and tried to help our law enforcement.

[13:50:19] At the state, I've kept our agencies apprised of all that we're doing and constantly asking what they could be doing. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has set aside $525,000 to help the Orlando Police Department cover some of their expenses. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has also asked Justice for $2 million in grants to help both the city and the county to cover expenses that they have. The State Department of Children and Families of Suicide has set aside $500,000 to cover grief counseling and other issues.

I want to congratulate the mayors for what they've done with regard to reaching out to everybody that's impacted in the new center that's open.

As I've talked to family members, they're in their grieving process but they're moving on to how are they going to bury their loved ones. They're asking for privacy. They're asking for people to respect them. No different than what you would expect if this happened to one of your loved ones. I know everybody is very interested in what happened here, but this is somebody's son or daughter, brother, sister, grandchild, and they're grieving. They cannot imagine how this happened to their family. None of us could imagine how this could have happened to any of our families.

I want to thank everybody for what they're doing to help each of these families get back to work, get their lives back to as normal as possible. It will never be the same, but this state is resilient, the city is resilient, this country is resilient. We all know this is terror. We've got to destroy ISIS. And as a nation we'll do that. Thank you.

Now I'll turn it over to Mayor Buddy Dyer.

BUDDY DYER, ORLANDO MAYOR: Thank you, Governor.

Good afternoon.

During the past three days, the people of Orlando across the country and around the world have responded with love, compassion and unity, and we are overwhelmed by the outpouring of love for our community. I'm pleased to announce that we have had the One Orlando fund opened for two days and we have already raised $3.6 billion. That total keeps rising. Disney stepped up to $1 million. The Orlando Magic and DeVoss Family Foundation donated $500,000. Earlier today, J.P. Morgan also donated $500,000.

But today, we continue to help the victims and those who witnessed the event to recover. The chief talked about our efforts with our first responders and city personnel and county and local law enforcement agencies in terms of getting the counseling that they need, but there's a wide range of services that the families and the victims and the witnesses need. So earlier today we opened the Orlando Family Assistance Center at Camping World Stadium, and that's formerly known as the Citrus Bowl. So a lot of you would probably know it as the Citrus Bowl. But it's Camping World Stadium. We have all of the necessary support services in one location. I had a chance to meet with the various providers this morning, and they are extremely excited to be able to be helpful. So many people want to reach out and be able to do something, and they are able to do something for the victims, everything from assisting with funeral services to foster care, airlines, assisting in travel and issuing licenses and I.D.s.

I want to thank the press for the responsible reporting and coverage of this event and the coverage of the heroic acts and the stories of the people that were involved. But I do want to emphasize what the chief said and ask you to -- ask you to --

TERESA JACOBS, MAYOR OF ORANGE COUNTY, FLORIDA: Can we get a first responder?

DYER: Yeah.

Can we get a first responder?

JACOBS: George?

Yeah.

(CROSSTALK)

[13:55:08] JACOBS: Yeah, if you can give him some room by backing up your cameras, we'll hold off just a minute.

BLITZER: They're pausing because someone apparently fainted and they're getting a first responder to deal with that.

Let's get back to the mayor.

DYER: Everybody has done their job well, but please do respect our police officers. They can't talk to you. There's still a federal investigation and an FBI investigation going on, so please respect them.

Mayor Teresa Jacobs.

JACOBS: Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, as mayor of Orange County, I'm representing all of our 1.2 million residents to do two things, and I'm calling on the citizens across the greater region of 3.3 million people to do two things. One, as assistant -- Special Assistant Hopper?

HOPPER: Hopper.

JACOBS: -- Hopper has said, if you see something, say something. If you say something, he will do something. I think we have all seen, by what we've learned so far, that if more people would have said something sooner, it's just possible this could have been prevented. Please help us in reporting everything that you see that you think could be suspicious or related to this.

Next, we have a lot of funerals coming up in our community over the next week or week and a half. And as I've heard everybody say, we are a resilient community, and we are a resilient community, but our capacity to be resilient is only as great as our capacity to love, care for, and support everyone in this community. So I'm calling on every member of Orange County, every citizen of this region, to exercise the utmost of passion for every person, for every person experiencing grief, for every person you may disagree with. This is a time for us to come together. This is a time when anyone else that seeks to come to our community and threaten the lives of our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, our friends, this is the time when we say enough is enough, we will not tolerate it. So I think it's time for all of us to look deep in our hearts and souls and make sure we are doing our best to be the kind of people that the 50 people that have died, that they deserve to have protecting them.

God bless you, and thank you.

Now I will turn the podium back to Mayor Dyer who's going to take questions.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Agent Hopper, what's the status of the wife?

HOPPER: With respect to the wife, I can tell you that that is only one of many interviews that we have done and will continue to do in this investigation. We cannot comment on the content or the outcome of that investigation. So at this time, I would have no further comment.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Have you spoken to other gay club owners in Orlando, have you spoken to them, such as the Revere Club?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The FBI considers notifying all clubs in the area, what we refer to commonly as duty to notify. And we have put out intelligence bulletins and made contact with those clubs to give them a heightened sense of awareness. I would ask that based on the fact that we're going through the period

of Ramadan and that we had the Fourth of July coming up, that everyone in the community should have just a general sense of awareness, but there's no credible or specific threat that indicates there's anything planned for the Orlando area or nationally.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE QUESTION)

HOPPER: I'm sorry?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE QUESTION)

HOPPER: I can't hear you.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: When did you become aware -- (INAUDIBLE)

HOPPER: Can anybody hear what she said?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE QUESTION)

HOPPER: The question was, was there an opportunity to follow him beforehand. There are policy and legal implications with respect to counter-terrorism investigations. As I mentioned earlier, at the time of this particular incident, this individual was not a subject of an active investigation which limits on those things that we can do. So, no, there was no surveillance at that time. I'm sorry?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Is the FBI tracking Westboro Baptist Church?

HOPPER: I have no information on that at this time.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Were you able to paint a picture about the night of the shooting?

HOPPER: The FBI is reconstructing the subject's movements going back months, days, hours and minutes before the fatal act here at the Pulse nightclub, and that is something we are looking at and scrubbing thoroughly. Not anything I can share at this time.

(CROSSTALK)

HOPPER: Sorry?