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Trump Ready to Take Action on Intelligence Community; Inside Istanbul Nightclub Attacked on New Year's; Pakistan Moves to Stop Honor Killings; France Uses Computer Game to Show Consequences of Jihad. Aired 2-2:30a ET
Aired January 05, 2017 - 02:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[02:00:04] MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: This is CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles.
And ahead this hour --
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HOLMES: Thanks for your company, everyone. I'm Michael Holmes. NEWSROOM L.A. starts right now.
Donald Trump has expressed doubt in the U.S. intelligence community for some time now. And now it appears he might be ready to take action. Sources with the transition say the president-elect is looking for ways to limit the power of the director of National Intelligence. Now, that office heads up 16 agencies that you see there on your screen.
A source says Trump's pick for national security advisor is behind the push. Retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn forced out of the Defense Intelligence Agency himself a couple of years ago. The "Wall Street Journal" first reported the story.
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DAMIAN PALETTA, REPORTER, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Now, a lot of Republicans and Donald Trump's top national security advisor, Michael Flynn, are very suspicious of DNI. They believe a lot of information that comes out of DNI is politicized and spun in a way to kind of make, quite frankly, Democrats feel better about the intelligence they're getting.
Flynn now in a senior role -- he was at the Defense Intelligence Agency and pushed out of that job in 2014 by the director of National Intelligence. Now Flynn's in the driver's seat and able to push this proposal that would pare back the DNI, take a lot of its power away from Washington, and make it more of an analysis center, and put more power back in the CIA's hands.
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HOLMES: Now, on Friday, Donald Trump will hear from the intelligence officials he's been criticizing. He'll get a full report on alleged hacking during the presidential campaign.
Pamela Brown reports, so far, Trump remains skeptical of their conclusions.
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PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tonight, President-elect Trump escalating his ongoing battle with the U.S. intelligence community. Tweeting just days before the high-profile briefing, "The 'intelligence' briefing on so-called 'Russian hacking' was delayed until Friday. Perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange."
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: And we had a meeting.
BROWN: Intelligence officials are pushing back, denying there was ever a delay in the briefing and that it was always scheduled for Friday.
Trump also siding with Julian Assange, a man wanted by the U.S. For leaking classified information, who, in an interview with FOX News, denied Russia had anything-to-doing with handing over the stolen documents from the DNC and Clinton campaign chairman, John podesta.
JULIAN ASSANGE, FOUNDER & DIRECTOR, WIKILEAKS: We have said repeatedly over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not state party.
BROWN: Trump tweeting, "Julian Assange said a 14-year-old could have hacked podesta. Why was DNC so careless? Also, said Russians did not give him the info."
On Capitol Hill today, Vice president-elect Mike Pence defended Trump's skepticism.
MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: The president- elect has expressed his very sincere and healthy American skepticism about intelligence conclusions.
BROWN: U.S. officials tell CNN Trump's continued public attacks are hurting morale in the intelligence community, with one official saying, "It's a sad day when politicians put more stock in Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange over the American who's risk their lives providing objective nonpartisan intelligence analysis."
CNN has learned Trump has already been briefed by intelligence officials on the Russian hacks, but that the comprehensive report due this week will provide a fuller picture of why the U.S. is putting the blame on Russia.
JOHN BRENNAN, CIA DIRECTOR: I would suggest to individuals, who have not yet seen the report, who have not yet been briefed on it, that they wait and see what it is that the intelligence community is putting toward before they make those judgments. BROWN (on camera): So, publicly, Donald Trump is seen badgering the
intelligence community through his tweets and comments but privately, behind the scenes during the briefings, sources tell me that Donald Trump is very polite, professional, even deferential, so people within the intelligence community are trying to figure out why his public persona is so different from how he is behind the scenes.
Pamela Brown, CNN, Washington.
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[02:05:10] HOLMES: And for more, CNN intelligence and security analyst, Bob Baer, joins us now from Telluride in Colorado.
Good to see you.
Let's start with this "Wall Street Journal" report. Donald Trump's team supposedly planning a paring down of a couple of agencies and perhaps sending more CIA agents overseas. A huge development. What do you make of it?
BOB BAER, CNN INTELLIGENCE & SECURITY ANALYST: Well, Michael, you know, I've talked to people that are part of his planning for a remake of the intelligence agencies and they really intend to go after the CIA, the DNI, director of National Intelligence, the whole intelligence community. You know, you even hear about a hit list of people they're after at the CIA. I've never seen it myself. But you have to wonder. I think they're determined to do this as "Wall Street Journal" article is right on the nose.
HOLMES: When we look at the broader issue of Donald Trump and the intelligence community, it was extraordinary today. Back in 2010, Donald Trump raising the idea of the death penalty over WikiLeaks leaking U.S. Classified material. Now he's quoting Assange as an apparent teller of truth. What do you make of that?
BAER: It's extraordinary. I mean, I couldn't believe it when I saw this because Julian Assange is a Russian mouthpiece. I mean, all of his leaks can be traced back to Moscow in so many ways. He's done so much damage to U.S. National security. It's incredible. I mean, and the fact that he would embrace him or trust Julian Assange. I mean, what Julian Assange says that a 14-year-old could have done this hack, he's wrong. He's not telling the truth. That was Russian code that was used. Very sophisticated. It's never been sold on any sort of market. It's not something you pick up on the Internet. You know, this is a turn of events that I never thought I would see. It's just incredible.
It was interesting when he said that, you know, Julian Assange was saying, well, our source wasn't the Russian government or a state. But I mean, you were with the CIA. What self-respecting Russian hacker is going to send the stuff in an in postmarked the kremlin.
He'll have multiple layers of people handling it before it gets to WikiLeaks, right? BAER: Exactly. This is a KGB operation, need to know. Julian
Assange often doesn't know the sources of his leaks. He's even said that, "I don't know who sent me the stuff, I just publish it." That doesn't work either. I mean, and there's absolutely no reason the Russians would inform him what they're doing, why they're doing it. They simply send him leaks, you know, the material. Julian Assange is a narcissist. He doesn't care. He wants attention. He puts it out to say it's not from the Russians. Plus, he's a wanted man. He could be convicted in the United States for espionage, very easily.
HOLMES: What worries you the most in the big picture? I mean if Donald Trump doesn't trust the intelligence community now, do you worry that one day they're going to warn him over an impending attack or a threat from a country whose leader he likes and he might not act the way that you might think he should?
BAER: You know, I don't know what's going on here. But I'll tell you if you were in the CIA, I won't go to Moscow. Six months ago, an officer was beat up outside the embassy. The Obama administration didn't make a big deal of it.
If you're in the CIA and you've got the president turning to Julian Assange or Putin for your intelligence as credible sources, what's the point in going? You know, it's just amazing that they haven't backed down from this so far. You know, as a former CIA officer in the field, I really worry about what sort of conflict is coming between the president and the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community. And don't forget, most of this stuff about Russian hacking is coming from the national security agency which is not part of the CIA. And no one's ever accused them of being political. None of this makes any sense at all to me.
HOLMES: And I suppose Donald Trump obviously has a lot of passionate supporters. What's the potential damage I suppose to the public's faith in their security institutions when the president-elect doubts them?
[02:09:56] BAER: Well, there's never been an occasion where the United States president has accused and the FBI, let's not forget, and the CIA of being you know disloyal to the United States. It's never happened. A conflict with this. There's been unhappiness we know in the past that's leaked out but it's always been corrected internally. There's never been a public attack by a president on the CIA.
HOLMES: All right. Bob Baer, a CNN intelligence and security analyst, thanks so much. Appreciate it. Good to see you.
BAER: Thank you.
HOLMES: Chinese state media is blasting Donald Trump over his use of Twitter to conduct foreign policy. An editorial published by Chinoise says Trump's, quote, "obsession with Twitter diplomacy" is undesirable. It goes on to say, quote, "It is commonly accepted that diplomacy is not a child's game and Twitter should not be a tool for foreign policy." Turkish authorities say they have identified the Istanbul nightclub
attacker who killed 39 people on New Year's but police have not released his name, nor where he's from. New raids have brought in more arrests in connection with the shooting. 20 suspects with alleged links to ISIS are now in custody and Turkish reports say some of them are thought to have lived with the gunman.
Has Sara Sidner was given access to the nightclub where this attack happened. Here's what she found.
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SARA SIDNER, CNN CORESPONDENT (voice-over): In order to get to the Reina Nightclub from the Bosporus, you have to take a boat.
We're now entering where this massacre happened.
It's truly in a beautiful spot. From the beautiful terrace, which is on the Bosporus, you can't see damage, but the moment you walk in, you can see the very first bullet hole that we've been able to see from this attack. That is definitely a high-caliber weapon. Huge hole.
That's blood from a victim on the wall right beneath the large bullet hole.
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SIDNER: To get some idea just how frightened people were, look what they left behind, shoes, coats, there are purses. There are glasses and scarves. We also see a hat, and that is stained with blood.
This is the bar in the dance club area where people would eat and drink, dance and enjoy themselves. This area is where people sort of trying to hide anything they could. In the end, this place we're standing was strewn with bodies.
From what we can see, this is the area that seems to have the most bullet holes. And the holes are huge. But surprisingly, there aren't that many considering all the shooting that happened that night. That is because the terrorist was targeting people one by one by one.
This is the view from the Reina across the Bosporus. You're looking at the Asia side with the rolling hills and beautiful mosques. This is why people came here. It is incredibly picturesque. But now, so many people will remember that a slaughter happened here.
And the owner is really struggling with figuring out whether or not he will open up this club again. He says he'll leave it up to his employees who both saved people and died here.
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HOLMES: Sara Sidner reporting there.
And still to come here on CNN NEWSROOM L.A., Pakistan moves to stop the ancient custom of so-called honor murders. But will the courts enforce the new law?
Also, France hopes to discourage young people from becoming jihadists by showing them the consequences of their choices before it's too late.
We'll be right back.
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[02:16:50] HOLMES: Welcome back, everyone. Israel's prime minister says a soldier convicted of manslaughter should be pardoned. A military court convicted him in the shooting of a Palestinian man hon laid wounded after allegedly trying to stab another Israeli soldier last year. There were some scuffles that erupted outside the military court in Tel Aviv ahead of the verdict on Wednesday. This is a case that has divided Israeli society, some siding with the soldier, others taking the military's side.
The defense minister urging calm.
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AVIGDOR LIEBERMAN, ISRAELI DEFENSE MINISTER (through translation): This is a harsh verdict. The first thing I'd ask from all of us including those who like this verdict or those like me who like it much less, we are all committed to respect the court ruling. We are committed to keep restraint.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: He faces up to 20 years behind bars. His formal sentencing takes place in the next few days.
Every year, hundreds of Pakistani men and women fall victim to so- called honor killings, which are also called "honor murders," the murder of somebody that perpetrators justify because of a supposedly grave offense. Now a new law aims to outlaw this ancient custom.
CNN's Alexandra Field joins us from Hong Kong and has been looking into it.
You found some developments, Alexandra?
ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Look, Michael, the fact that this law passed in the first place has to be considered a success because previous attempts to end this tradition of honor killings have failed. So, that part is being celebrated. There is hope that the law could bring a measure of justice to the families who seek it.
But there are serious questions that are also being raised whether or not legislative reform can actually be as a deterrent to this rampant tradition of killing.
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FIELD (voice-over): For years in Pakistan, the law has let some get away with murder.
Asmat said she watched her son die, shot in the head by the family of a woman he was accused of having an affair with. Then, they killed the girl too, victims of a so-called honor killing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translation): It was cruelty. This was cruelty against my son. What honor? The girl was so young. She was 13 years old.
FIELD: None of the accused went to prison. Court documents show they were legally pardoned by the families of both victims. The girl's own mother and her father, who is one of the accused, and Asmat, too.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translation): I have placed a rock on my heart. I have to live for my other son who is alive. I cannot maintain enemies.
FIELD: She says she didn't accept blood money in exchange for the pardon but it's a common practice in Pakistan where, in 2015, nearly 1100 men and women were victims of honor killing. Now the law aims to change that, requiring a mandatory 25-year prison for those convicted in cases of honor killings, making pardons no longer legal.
But there's fear the courts won't be tough enough committing crimes that have long been to rated.
[02:20:09] MUHAMMAD YASIR, BROTHER WAS MURDERED IN HONOR KILLING (through translation): They have confidence in their murders, that they can kill and society will not be able to do anything to them.
FIELD: Muhammad Yasir's brother was murdered along with a woman he was accused of having affair with. A police report quotes witnesses naming her family members as the man who tied him up and slit his throat. No one was convicted of the crimes.
YASIR (through translation): When I see my brother's killers on the streets, I will pray to Allah and ask him for justice for there is no justice in Pakistan.
FIELD: Asmat says she had no way forward but to pardon her son's killers.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translation): I will get justice from the house of God. Humans do not give justice.
FIELD: She has hope in the future Pakistan's courts can do more.
(on camera): Asmat says her son's case was in the court system for two years before she gave up hope and issued the pardon. She says the accused killers live a few doors away from her. She saw no other way forward.
This law is intended to bring justice to these kinds these kinds of families. The prime minister of Pakistan came out after the passing of this law and said it would be widely enforced. But the activists who worked to fight against honor killings say there are still ways could it could potentially be skirted, that the court officers need to uphold this law because it only does apply to cases specifically of honor murder. That means there can be other cases of murder where the same penalties don't automatically apply -- Michael?
HOLMES: Extraordinary. A terrific report.
Thanks, Alexandra Field. Appreciate it.
Now to a gruesome, you might say bizarre, and certainly sickening attack, and streamed live on Facebook. Chicago police are expected to charge four suspects in the coming day.
We do want to warn you the video is disturbing.
You can see a man who has special needs - you see him in the corner -- there he is in the corner there, tied up. His mouth taped. His attackers beating him. They also cut him. And they yelled racially charged language and anti-Donald Trump obscenities at him.
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EDDIE JOHNSON, CHIEF, CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT: It is sickening. It's sickening. It makes you wonder what would make individuals treat somebody like that. You know, so I've been a cop for 28 years, and I've seen things that you shouldn't see in a lifetime, but it still amazes me how you still see things that you just shouldn't. So, I'm not going to say it shocked me but it was sickening.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: Extraordinary. Police say the man's parents received text messages that he was being held captive days after he had gone missing. They also say the man is now so traumatized that he can barely talk about what happened. We'll keep you informed of developments on that case.
Westerners who have become jihadists do so typically over a period of time, making crucial decisions along the way. In an effort to discourage radicalization, in France, a new video game offers a revealing step-by-step path through the process. It highlights how the wrong decisions at key moments can lead a person to jihadism.
CNN's Jim Bittermann with more.
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JIM BITTERMANN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): "You Always Have the Choice" is what the interactive video is named. And through a series of choices, viewers are taken step-by-step down a path toward radicalization or not, depending on which decisions are made. The same decisions a French young person might face.
(on camera): It's no secret that the French have a problem with homegrown terrorists. The interior ministry here has a list of 12,000 people suspected or known to be radicalized. In the Middle East, hundreds of French young people are thought to be currently involved with fundamentalist groups. And here at home, there have been numerous bloody attacks attempted or carried out by French nationals.
(voice-over): So as part of a half-billion-Euro campaign aimed at radical Islam, called Stop Jihad, government information officials created the video targeted at young people and parents alike. Viewers can follow either a young man or young woman as they fall in with fundamentalists who eventually lead them to terror cells in the Middle East.
It's similar to the journey this 16-year-old girl took three years ago. Encouraged by a young man she met on the Internet, she traveled to Syria and has not come back.
Valarie de Baraland (ph) regrets she didn't spot the radicalization signs shown in the video.
VALARIE DE BARALAND (ph), MOTHER OF RADICALIZED GIRL: Sadly, we did not talk about it in 2013. Now with time, and throughout the years, we were told the different detection for various signs and we realize our daughter did indeed act that way.
BITTERMANN: In fact, she is taking part in the Stop Jihad campaign to emphasize every parent should be concerned.
But the way kids behave at home may be different than the way they behave under the influence of others.
This terrorism expert, who has seen the video, says because it comes from the government, young people may not pay attention to it. He says, it's a good warning to parents and families of how quickly and how easily someone can be radicalized.
[02:25:27] UNIDENTIFIED TERRORISM EXPERT: It's important as they highlight in the campaign people tend to hide the radicalizing behavior. The Islamic State has put out messages inside magazines saying it is acceptable by the rules of the caliphate to if you were drinking alcohol before, keep drinking alcohol. If you were doing drugs before, don't do anything that can make yourself caught as long as the purpose of that behavior is to remain clandestine wherever you are.
BITTERMANN: David Valliet (ph), who once was recruited by radicals to fight in Afghanistan and spent five years in jail because of it, now, would to help young people make the right choices and resist the fundamentalist recruiters.
(on camera): Is there something you think could be said or done to stop young people from being attracted by the message of the jihadis?
DAVID VALLIET (ph), FORMER JIHADIST NOW WORKING AGAINST RADICALIZATION (through translation): We should and I think it should be mandatory that we add an extra class in middle school to warn them against this ideology. It will take a long time. We have minimum 10 years ahead of us.
BITTERMANN (voice-over): Valliet (ph), who is also taking part in the government's Stop Jihad campaign, says there are no miracle solutions, but it is critical to day to young people, as its video makes clear, you always have a choice.
Jim Bittermann, CNN, Paris.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: Time for a quick break. "State of America," with Kate Bolduan, is up next for our viewers in Asia.
For everyone else, the anatomy of a cyberattack. Security experts show us exactly how they caught Russian hackers in the act.
We'll be right back.
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[02:30:16] MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: You're watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. I'm Michael Holmes.
The headlines for you this hour.
(HEADLINES)
HOLMES: Donald Trump planning a major shake-up in the U.S. intelligence community. Sources say Trump wants to limit the power of the director of National Intelligence, and he is considering expanding the CIA's human spying capabilities instead of relying on electronic spying.
Trump is expected to receive an intelligence briefing on Friday about Russia's alleged hacking during the U.S. election, but he has already been making his position clear. He tweeted his support for Julian Assange's statement that Russia wasn't the source of the leaked information. The WikiLeaks founder published a trove of hacked e- mails during the presidential campaign that proved damaging to Hillary Clinton.
Trump claims, in this age of computers, it is impossible to know exactly who hacked the Democratic National Committee, but security experts say he's wrong, and they can prove it.
CNN's Claire Sebastian explains.
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DIMITRY EL PAROVICH, CO-FOUNDER & CEO, CROWDSTRIKE: In the summer of 2015, you had the initial intrusion into the DNC by Cozy Bear.
CLAIRE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The anatomy of a cyberattack that shifted the world's view of the Russian threat.
This is the Washington, D.C., office of Dimitry el Parovich, who's security firm, CrowdStrike, was hired earlier this year by the Democratic National Committee.
PAROVICH: We were brought in, in May. That's when we discovered that both Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear were inside the network.
SEBASTIAN: Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, two separate hacker groups, both, he believes, connected to Russian intelligence. Russia has repeatedly denied this.
And yet, using their software called Falcon, CrowdStrike was able to embed in the DNC network and watch.
PAROVICH: This is a chain of commands they're executing.
SEBASTIAN (on camera): When the president-elect says you have to catch them in the act?
PAROVICH: Well, we did. We caught them in the act.
SEBASTIAN (voice-over): Parovich grew up in the Soviet Union, moving to the U.S. as a teenager in the 1990s. He says it wasn't the breach that shocked him. It was what happened next.
PAROVICH: July, when, right before the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks discloses a lot of the e-mails from the DNC.
SEBASTIAN (on camera): Had you never seen this before or anything like this?
PAROVICH: We've observed just this type of behavior in Ukraine. The Russians hacked in political parties of opposition candidates in Ukraine, leaked their e-mails and documents. I never thought they would do this to the United States. I didn't think they would have the gall to do that.
SEBASTIAN: The hack on the DNC computer network, and the timed release of information found there, revealed not only the growing power of Russia in cyberspace, but also raised questions as to whether the U.S. and other countries had underestimated this threat.
(voice-over): Questions that are dividing Washington.
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, (R), ARIZONA: They are ahead of us in many respects in this whole issue of cyber warfare. Perhaps the only area where our adversaries have an advantage over us.
REP. GREGORY MEEKS, (D-NY), CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE ON EUROEP, EURASIA AND EMERGING THREATS: If the Russians want to have a cyber war in that regard, I feel confident that we are the best and we can do what we need to do in that regards.
SEBASTIAN: Gregory Meeks chairs a Congressional Committee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats.
MEEKS: We have some big elections coming up in Europe in 2017. It seems to me the only one that has an interest to see a divide between the European countries and the United States or the West in general to try to up tear power is Russia. So, we've got to make sure we send a strong message back to them.
SEBASTIAN: So far, El Parovich says the message is not getting through.
PAROVICH: Fancy Bear we've seen to pick up their activity after the election. Now, targeting Europe. I think it's likely the same playbook they've implemented successfully against the U.S. will be playing out in all those countries in the coming year. I'm not sure that the Europeans are prepared for it.
SEBASTIAN: A playbook he says where he says hacking is just a means to an end. The real weapon in this cyber war is information.
Claire Sebastian, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[02:35:03] HOLMES: Two disturbing viral videos, one of them showing a school officer body slamming a 15-year-old girl. What her defense attorney had to say about these incidents, coming up, next.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (EXPLETIVE DELETED)
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HOLMES: Two viral videos -- two videos, rather, are going viral in the U.S. at the moment, and they both involve police officers in altercations with teenage girls.
We do want to warn you, they are hard to watch.
The first was in Philadelphia. An officer breaking up a group fight and this happened.
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(SHOUTING)
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER: Stop!
We're done.
(SHOUTING)
UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER: We're done.
No. No. No.
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HOLMES: You can clearly see the officer punching that 16-year-old girl who is on the ground. The girl says she was backing away when the officer pushed her down. Police say the video does not show the teenager hitting the officer and knocking the glasses off the woman's face. Now let's go to North Carolina, and that is where a school resource
officer did this to a 15-year-old girl.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (EXPLETIVE DELETED)
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HOLMES: The video is only nine seconds long. We don't see what led up to the body slam. Police say the officer was responding to a fight and is now on administrative leave.
Criminal defense attorney, Darren Kavinoky, joins me now.
Gut reaction, first of all, to those videos?
DARREN KAVINOKY, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: A tale of two cases, or potentially. The first one from Philadelphia leaves me with a lot more questions than answers. And I've seen that video several times. That shows the difficulty of law enforcement where you've got a crowd seemingly out of control. And in some of the versions, it sounds like you hear the words gun, gun, gun, being repeated. And one of the most dangerous things for a police officer is to be in a crowd scene where somebody can get access to that officer's weapon. Now you've got an armed crazy person and an unarmed officer. That's a bad and dangerous situation.
HOLMES: The situation where both officers were apparently going towards the violence to try to stop it. I wonder, though, these are both teenaged girls.
KAVINOKY: Right.
HOLMES: Should age and gender play into an officer's reaction even if it is a violent situation?
KAVINOKY: I believe that it should. What, ultimately, we need to be concerned with is whether the officer's conduct was reasonable given the totality of the circumstances. So, that suggests that the circumstances are going to have a very significant impact on the appropriateness of the officer's behavior. So, for example, in the second clip, where the girl gets body slammed, I don't know that there's any good excuse for what happened in that second situation. And that's why I say this is a tale of two very different cases.
[02:40:16] HOLMES: Defense attorney, Darren Kavinoky, thank you for that.
Now, innovators and marketers at the Consumer Electronics Show this week are unveiling a slew of products claiming to solve problems or make life easier.
CNN's Samuel Burke is in Las Vegas and tells us what's been getting buzz at the conference.
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SAMUEL BURKE, CNN DIGITAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Michael, here at the largest tech show on earth, all of the buzz is about the mysterious car company, Faraday Future. For a long time, they've been all talk, no walk. Now they have finally unveiled their flagship production car called the FF91.
It goes from zero to 60 miles per hour, 96 kilometers per hour in just 2.39 seconds. It's an electric car. So, the most important thing to know is how far it can go on just one charge. This vehicle can go about 380 miles. That's about 611 kilometers. Again, on just one charge.
If you're the type of person who forgets their keys, you can use facial recognition to get into this vehicle. They showed if you can't find a parking space, the driver can get out of the car and it will keep on circling the lot until it finds a free space and back in.
This company did have a major speed bump on stage in front of all the world's press when the billionaire investor who is the founder of the Chinese version of Netflix came out of the car. It was supposed to go autonomously a few feet and didn't move at all. It's one of the reasons this company is firmly in the shadow of its big rival, Tesla.
The other big trend this year is artificial intelligence and voice recognition. In fact, I just --
ALEXA: Intelligence is an appreciable quality.
BURKE: But interrupting people is not.
I've been spending time with this robot is called Pepper that combines artificial intelligence and voice recognition.
It's interesting to see how much Amazon has become a leader in this field because of the Amazon Echo speaker that many people call Alexa because that speaker allows you to use commands.
A lot of other companies we see are trying to use some of that intelligence and make their products integrate with the Echo.
You see how important voice communication has become with robots. Before it was all about buttons and maybe even gesture controls, a lot of people thought.
Really, at the end of the day, you see that talking with a robot, talking with the Amazon Echo is really what makes the products feel so natural. They follow you with --
ALEXA: Of course.
BURKE: They follow you with their eyes. And that's another way we see a lot of technology around us becoming more and more human.
Should I bring one back for you, Michael?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: No, because it creeps me out. No. That is one weird robot.
Anyway, thanks for watching CNN NEWSROOM -- I'll take the car though, Sam --- live from Los Angeles. I'm Michael Holmes.
"World Sport" is coming up next.
(WORLD SPORT)
