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Florida School Massacre; Judge Rejects Manafort's Latest Bail Offer. Aired 3:30-4pm ET

Aired February 22, 2018 - 15:30   ET

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


[15:30:03] CHRIS SWECKER, FORMER FBI ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIVE DIVISION: --there should be an agent overseeing the analyst who had some investigative experiences. My fear is that it has become an assembly line environment in that call center and people with no investigative experiences or fields in these calls and they don't have the perspective and the context and the background and experience to understand what's an urgent call.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, I'm sure that's all getting looked into quite thoroughly at the moment. While I have you, Chris, I would love your opinion on how we heard from the president, you know, really doubling down on this whole suggestion that arming teachers in our schools could prevent the next shooting. Even saying, you know, teachers could receive a pay bonus.

As, you know, former FBI, someone who is fire armed trained, I want you to explain what is required to train a teacher and then I presume, maintain that training. How realistic is that?

SWECKER: It's unworkable. There's 90,000 elementary schools in the country, that's not counting private schools or secondary schools or preschools. And a training program -- for example, in the FBI, we had to train quarterly all day long to stay proficient and certified to carry our firearm. And I think diverting teachers once every quarter even to go do that is unworkable.

Secondly, there are professionals who can handle the security at schools, who are trained. Teachers need to be teaching not, you know, openly wearing weapons in school. The only way to do this is openly carry the weapons, if it's a P.E. teacher or teacher. It's hard to imagine these teachers strutting around school with a weapon on their hip. I don't see it happening. I just think it's totally unworkable.

IN the International Association of Chiefs of Police which is largest police organization in the country is against, you know, this type of activity, assault weapons, for example. They've come out very strongly against assault weapons, bump stocks, concealed weapons across state lines. There's a bunch of things if you go on the ICP website that are very common sense positions on gun control or different aspects of controlling guns.

BALDWIN: Just something we're hearing not only from the president but also the NRA on this one. But I hear you and how this wouldn't be workable from your expertise. Chris Swecker, I appreciate you coming on.

SWECKER: You have no idea who is the bad guys and the good guys are. If you're responding officer you have no idea who's the bad guy and who's the good guy.

BALDWIN: Chris, thank you. As students ran for their lives inside that high school, one woman is a school librarian actually yelled for people get back in their rooms, sheltering dozens of students and staff safely behind a lock door. How she knew to do that instantly, her friend and fellow librarian survived the shooting at Sandy Hook several years before. The pair of educators join me next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:37:00] BALDWIN: The relationship between my next two guests is a painful yet heartbreaking reminder of how prevalent school shootings have become. Yvonne Cech is a librarian. Five years ago she worked at Sandy Hook Elementary School where she sheltered 18 young children and four staff members behind a locked closet door. She saved their lives.

Diana Haneski is also a librarian. She works at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. And when a gunman storm the school just last week, she thought of her long time friend Yvonne and she knew exactly what to do. Diana quickly sprang into action, locking 50 students and five staff members safely into a media equipment room and now she, too, is being called a her hero.

Yvonne and Diana are with me now. Ladies, thank you so much for sharing the time and I just cannot believe. Diana, just beginning with you. I mean this happened to your friend. This has happened with you. Can you tell me -- take me back to that moment, tell me what you did? And then what point did you think my god, this is exactly what my friend Yvonne had to do?

DIANA HANESKI, LIBRARIAN, MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS HIGH SCHOOL: Well, first of all, let me say I always thought about what she had to do and I was always trying to be prepared with things I need like my phone, my walkie talkie and my keys, and that's thanks to her conversations with me after Sandy Hook.

So when I heard it was a code red -- at first it wasn't. Immediately when I heard code red, I got the kids in. I just -- that's my big memory of come on, come on. Get in here, get in here, now, now. This is serious. And that's what I did. I got them in one area that was a TV production area and then I went to my area, which is the back of the media center and equipment room and my clerk was amazing, thank god I had her. She got kids from the other side as well. We got them in a room and hid them behind carts in the back of this room and I can't believe we got 50 kids in there.

And I felt like we were doing the best we could and I also had four other adults. And once the lights were out we just sat there. I told them they could text their families so that their families knew they were OK. Because I knew it was serious right away because I had that walkie talkie. So I knew something was happening. I didn't know the horror until we came out here two hours later.

But I thought of Yvonne right away. Then when we were in the room I remembered we have to be quiet and I can't trust anything that happens after this. So, I was on high adrenaline, high alert, waiting for whatever was going to happen.

So, yes, I thought of Yvonne a lot. She had put a file cabinet in front of the door and I remembered that. So my clerk started putting carts -- we started moving other carts in front of the door so in case the shooter came to us, it would be a little harder to find those kids.

[15:40:11] BALDWIN: Yvonne, I mean, I know you came down to Parkland. You've just been with Diana, but hearing all of this again, hearing that it happened again and to your friends, what are you thinking?

YVONNE CECH, FORMER SANDY HOOK LIBRARIAN: First of all, I'm thinking how amazing the staff and students were at Parkland and how they kept their heads and how they were so clear thinking and so strong, and did so many things right to, you know, minimize the carnage.

I'm glad that Diana was able to think clearly, sure. But on the other hand, I am so angry that she had to use the information that I gave her in any situation, that anybody ever has to use that story and take that information to help protect themselves. It's infuriating to me and I'm outraged that we still continue to have this problem of gun violence in our country.

BALDWIN: I mean, Yvonne, just on your outrage, is this the new reality where librarians, you know, kind, compassionate school librarians across this country, are now having to carry around walkie talkies and think -- kind of eyeball what they would shove in front of a door in case hell breaks loose at school?

CECH: So, again, if that's the point that we're at, where we're having to look at how to -- you know, if we're looking at our schools as a combat zone and we're having to look at how to defend ourselves against perpetrators, I think we're missing the bigger picture here, which is pull back and look at this more holistically. Let's look at the original of this problem instead of trying to create more defenses of protecting ourselves. Let's look at what's causing it. I think the focus is on the wrong place right now. I think the focus needs to be on the cause.

BALDWIN: The focus, as we just heard today --

HANESKI: I agree with that.

BALDWIN: Diana, I want to come back to you. Because the focus in the last couple of days now, I mean, you know, speaking of your roles, I mean the conversations around shootings have turned to this proposal of arming teachers, right, training teachers to use those firearms in the case of a mass shooting. President Trump just proposed this new idea. I want you to listen to the president here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: One of the fake news networks, CNN, last night was saying I want teachers with handguns. I want certain highly adept people, people that understand weaponry, guns, if they're -- if they have that aptitude because not everybody has an aptitude for a gun. But if they have the aptitude, I think it can conceal permit for having teachers and letting people know that there are people in the building with guns.

You won't have. In my opinion, you won't have the shootings because these people are cowards. They're not going to walk into a school if 20% of the teachers have guns. It may be 10%. It may be 40%. They have to go to training, I would say every six months or every year. They have to fairly, you know, really a rigorous course in what they're doing. And they should be paid extra money. Those teachers should be paid extra money so they get a bonus and they love getting that bonus too.

And it would be much less expensive than the guards. It wouldn't look bad. You know, if you have guards, it looks like you have an armed camp that would look terrible because people are talking we're going to put a lot of security guards in the building. Look terrible. And it would be much more effective.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Hear how these hero librarians responded to that president and his proposal here, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:48:31] BALDWIN: Before the break you met two women, both librarians who survived a school massacre, Diana Haneski, who works at Stoneman Douglas, credits her close friend for telling her exactly what to do in that crisis. That friend, Yvonne Cech, she was a librarian at Sandy Hook. And I played president's words for them from today calling for some teachers to be armed and to be paid bonuses for that training. Here is how these women responded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Diana? Diana?

HANESKI: No, that's ridiculous. That just ridiculous. Honestly, come on.

BALDWIN: You wouldn't have felt more safe if you had been armed? I mean I'm just asking. That's the president's proposal.

HANESKI: It would have been more mayhem. It would have been more mayhem. No. Teachers got into this to teach. I'm in my 20th year with Broward schools. Guns, that did not come into my head when I went to study to be a library media specialist. That's just ridiculous. Come on. We have -- we have a sergeant there at our school. That didn't stop the shooter. He was there. He was not afraid that we had someone that was armed. Come on. No. No.

BALDWIN: Yvonne?

CECH: I couldn't agree more.

BALDWIN: The NRA today says you need to harden schools like you have armed guards at the White House, you have armed guards on Capitol Hill. You should have arm your teachers at schools.

CECH: I think the NRA has lost their ability to understand real life and I think they have lost their seat at the table in terms of understanding what really needs to happen to resolve this issue.

[15:50:10] Their only concern in my opinion is perpetuating a culture of violence in our country. They don't seem to understand that that's not solving the problem. It is not solving the problem to continue to arm people. That's not going to help.

If you think about what happened in Diana's school. Their hallways were chaos. The hallways -- they were evacuating from a fire drill, and the hallways were filled with kids, trying to imagine one, two, or 20% or 40% as Donald Trump just said of teachers in that crowded hallway. They had over 3,000 students in that school. Imagine a teaching having to be so well trained they only shot the perpetrator and not any innocent lives.

That's an absolutely ridiculous concept. And it's just, obviously, if Donald Trump thinks that teachers would love the bonuses, teachers love teaching, teachers love connecting with students and educating students, not being in a combat zone and getting bonuses.

BALDWIN: I'm listening to you too, very carefully in all your years. Go ahead Diana.

HANESKI: We need to listen to the students in the young adult revolution. They are making sense. And that's why I'm talking today, Brooke, because I need to support them. That's all there is to it.

BALDWIN: OK.

CECH: They are thinking logically.

BALDWIN: OK, OK.

CECH: Not only are they thinking logically, but how -- how ashamed should all lawmakers be right now that the students at Parkland that have just gone through a horrific experience, a life threatening trauma, and they're the ones who are clear thinking and who are demanding action. They are asking us. They are asking for us to protect them to keep them safe, and the adults, the lawmakers are not answering that? How ashamed should they be? I mean, this is -- this is -- if there was ever a teachable moment, this is the definition of a teachable moment. Lawmakers, step up, listen to what the kids are asking for. They are asking for our help.

BALDWIN: Ladies, I really appreciate both of your voices. I appreciate all of your years dedicated to young people in this country as well, Yvonne and Diana. Thank you so much for speaking up UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: And just before I talk to Diana, she attended a funeral of one of her colleague, coach Aaron Feis, he is coach threw himself in front of students as the gunman fired indiscriminately, ultimately killing 17 people. Here's how his friends and family remembered him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE VIRDEN, FRIEND OF SLAIN COACH AARON FEIS: Aaron Feis's been a hero to many people for a long time. And the beauty of today, the beauty of the 14, is the whole world gets to know that now. Now they get to understand.

SHERIFF SCOTT ISRAEL, BROWARD COUNTRY, FLORIDA: Before I knew any of the stories and anybody knew Feis knows where I'm coming from. Before you even heard how he died, you knew he died putting himself in harm's way toe save others. That's who he was.

BRANDON CORONA, FAMILY FRIEND: I started my freshman year intimidated by the big man, by the end of my senior year, I was intimidated what my life would have been not knowing him. If you're one of his, you knew it and you never want to let him down because he always lifted you up.

After getting older, I got to see the real Aaron, the man who stopped anything for anyone for anything that could help that student or player, broke confrontation with words, give children with no transportation a ride home so they didn't have to walk miles after long practice. I saw a man sitting in the living room with my mom who was like a brother to Aaron, make hundreds of highlights for students and athletes so that they could make it college, but money was never an option.

The only promise he wanted is that you got your degree and make him proud.

MICHAEL CONNELL JR, BROTHER OF AARON FEIS: Aaron -- one thing Aaron would say if he saw you stuck in fear, stuck in doubt, or stuck in sadness was, hey, why don't you do something today? Because that's Aaron.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[15:59:04] BALDWIN: Just into us here at CNN, a judge has denied Paul Manafort the request to modify the terms of bail. President Trump's former campaign manager lost bid to be released from house arrest after a federal judge ruled his proposal to put up certain of his properties as collateral was unsatisfactory. The reason for the judge's denial, she says Trump Tower apartment Manafort is offering may be facing foreclosure, and his Virginia home is already used for collateral on another house. Manafort is facing charging including money laundering as Special Counsel Mueller investigates Russia's role in the 2016 presidential election. I'm Brooke Baldwin, thank you so much for being with me here. We're going to send it to Washington early. The Lead with Jake Tapper starts now.

JAKE TAPPER, HOST, THE LEAD: Thank Brooke. President Trump suggests paying teachers an extra bonus to pack heat, "The Lead" starts now.

After hearing from survivors and seeing their gut ranching pain, President Trump today saying he's open to new restrictions on gun ownership, but are the NRA and Congress hoping this all just goes away.