Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Democrats Preparing to Subpoena DOJ for Full Mueller Report; France Launches Contest to Rebuild Notre Dame's Spire; China Economy Grows By More Than Expected in First Quarter. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired April 17, 2019 - 09:00   ET

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


[09:00:00] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Concept. I just got out our Easter egg dye kit to do with my daughter this year.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We're doing it this weekend, too.

HARLOW: I need to put plastic all over the entire house so that the dye doesn't get everywhere.

CAMEROTA: I would strongly recommend that.

HARLOW: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Drape your house in plastic.

HARLOW: Thank you, Ali. Great to be with you, friend.

CAMEROTA: Great to be with you. It's been a great time. Thank you so much.

HARLOW: Let's toss it to my colleague Jim Sciutto in the "NEWSROOM" right now.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: We begin this hour with breaking news, a manhunt is now under way this morning in Colorado for an armed woman whom authorities say is infatuated with the Columbine mass shooting. Hundreds of thousands of students are out of school across the Denver area this morning as police search for an 18-year-old Sol Pais is her name.

The FBI said that Pais arrived in Denver Monday night and immediately went to a store and bought a pump action shotgun as well as ammunition. All of this have coming just days ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Columbine shooting.

CNN correspondent Scott McLean is live in Littleton, Colorado, this morning.

Scott, just an enormous number of students across an enormous number of school districts who have been taken out of school as a precaution this morning. What else are police doing to find this woman?

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it is hard to overstate just what the impact is of having that many schools closed across such a large metro area. It's important to note, though, there is no specific threat to any one school, but obviously what authorities know about this 18-year-old woman is concerning enough to potentially close schools across the board.

You mentioned her name is Sol Pais. She is a student at a high school in Miami Beach, Florida, and she came to Colorado on Monday. A reporter for the "Miami Herald" actually managed to speak with a man at her home who identified himself as her father. He told that reporter that he thinks she has some kind of mental issue or mental problem but that he thinks she will be OK.

The concern from the FBI's standpoint is that, A, she bought that weapon when she got here along with ammunition and also this fascination or this infatuation -- the word that they used -- with the Columbine shooting in 1999. And that along with some nonspecific threats has them worried. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN PHILLIPS, FBI SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE: We have no specific information about any specific threat to any particular school. We don't have that sort of credible information, but we do consider her to be a credible threat to the community.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCLEAN: A credible threat, but, again, nonspecific. So here's the rub for authorities. The FBI was asked what they would charge her with and they didn't say. All they would say is that they're working with the U.S. attorney's office to try to figure out what charges might actually be appropriate here. Obviously it's not illegal to buy a gun in this country and her threats are not to specific so we don't have a good answer to that question at this point, they just said that they would arrest her and try to hold her for as long as they legally could.

One other point, Jim, and that's the Jefferson County schools, they are meeting this morning with their head of security. Columbine is part of that school district, they're trying to figure out where to go from here and what to do. There is no word yet obviously on whether schools will be open tomorrow or how long this will go on for.

SCIUTTO: It's a remarkable response.

Scott McLean, we know you're on it.

On the phone now we have Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Shrader.

Sheriff Shrader, thank you for taking the time this morning. I know you and your fellow law enforcement colleagues have a lot on your plate today. Tell us what you're doing now to find this woman. I imagine it's a needle in a haystack.

JEFF SHRADER, SHERIFF OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, COLORADO: Yes, that's probably a very good description. We have a lot of people who are both patrolling schools, even though that they are closed, in particular Columbine High School, and we have our giant information and joint operations centers open at the FBI headquarters in Denver. Excuse me. We --

SCIUTTO: What -- sorry, go ahead.

SHRADER: We have had people following up the leads as they come in and then also doing physical searches of areas where we believe that Sol Pais may have more recently been. But we are just following the leads that we can now and there will be some additional work that gets done as now that it's becoming daylight and things can be seen.

SCIUTTO: Have you had any credible sightings of her either via eyewitness accounts or CCTV footage? Are you confident of any points in the last 24 hours where you've been able to identify where she is?

SHRADER: No, I can't say that in the last 24 hours. The FBI and their teams are chasing down electronic media from places where she was known to have come so that we can get better photographic information of her, more recent.

[09:05:08] Additionally we have not had that -- unfortunately we haven't been able to identify anything in the last 24 hours. There's obviously been a little bit of a time lapse since when she landed in Denver and went and purchased this firearm.

SCIUTTO: What can members of the public do to help you best? I imagine you're getting a lot of calls. What do you recommend and what are you asking for?

SHRADER: Well, very simply, and obviously this is going to pertain to the Denver metro area, that's where we're focused, if somebody sees something, say something. Be a good witness and call 911, just let us know. We're going to go check it out.

To the point you made a little bit ago, have there been any sightings, there was -- yesterday there was some confusion that kind of spun up a different school in our school district, it ended up being a verified nanny of a child who was picking up the kid who had a similar resemblance. We're still going to check those out. If somebody looks similar, we want to check it out just in case.

SCIUTTO: Well, we understand we know you're doing your best. We're going to stay on this story and please reach out at any time if there's something that we could do to get the word out.

Sheriff Shrader, thanks very much.

SHRADER: Thanks for having me on.

SCIUTTO: I'm joined now by retired FBI supervisory special agent James Gagliano.

And James, help review what authorities are doing right now. If we could throw up the map again, it's a remarkable number of schools in that area affecting thousands of students that have now been shut down out of an abundance of caution here. In your view is that the right move?

JAMES GAGLIANO, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Look, you know, Jim, I think some people have talked about whether or not this was an overreaction or not and in hindsight will always certainly prove to be 20/20. I think it's the right move here.

Now look, the FBI was very careful. There is a credible threat, but they did not define that threat as being specific to a location. Now what the issue here is, well, first and foremost as the sheriff just mentioned, the fact that we do not know where this person is, her whereabouts are unknown is concerning. The second piece of this that I noticed, if you go back and look at the Columbine shooting that happened 20 years ago this next Saturday was it the fact that both of those shooters carried sawed off shotguns, and this woman apparently purchased a shotgun.

Now the problem that law enforcement has is she hasn't broken any laws yet and she certainly said some things that I understand are inflammatory or incendiary on social media and those are things that law enforcement would be looking at that we talked to the prosecutors, is there anything there they can charge her with.

Because, Jim, even if they grab her right now, if they bump into her or they collar her right now the best they can do is what's called a brief investigative detention. Meaning they can ask her questions hoping that she says something that gives them something that's chargeable.

Now I'm sure they're working and going through and scrubbing all the social media postings to see if there is any explicit threats there and if there are explicit threats they will charge her with those.

SCIUTTO: This phenomenon of either a copycat killer, right, someone who is inspired by a prior killing, particularly school shootings because of the enormous attention they get, this is somewhat in that category. How often do you see this? How often do you see -- did you profile folks who get caught up in this and try to kind of recreate the violent past?

GAGLIANO: Yes. Well, Jim, that's a great question from this perspective. Friday is April 19th and April 19th is generally viewed by law enforcement as a date that we have great concern over, and why is that? Well, right-wing groups have typically used that, extreme right-wing groups to mythologize things like the Battles of Concord and Lexington, and the -- you know, the ending of the Waco standoff with the FBI and the Branch Davidians, and in 1995 obviously the Oklahoma City bombing where 168 people were killed.

So do sometimes people in this type of situation that either glorify or magnify bad acts and bad things, do they target those dates, and the answer to that, Jim, is absolutely.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And you know what, it's not unlike terrorists, right? I mean, oftentimes dates you know that counter terror folks, on 9/11, other big dates they are particularly vigilant because the exact same phenomenon.

James Gagliano, thanks very much. I know we're going to stay in touch with you on this story.

GAGLIANO: You got it, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Well, another story we're following this morning, newly released text messages sent by Chicago's top prosecutor Kim Foxx reveal her frustrations with the Jussie Smollett case as it was under way. In messages sent to her staff, the Cook County state's attorney describes Smollett as a washed-up celeb who lied to cops. Smollett, as you'll remember, was accused of staging a hate crime against himself.

[09:10:04] Foxx had recused herself from the case but her office eventually dropped all 16 felony charges against the actor for the series "Empire."

CNN correspondent Nick Watt joins me now.

Nick, what are we hearing from the state's attorney as these text messages are revealed because it raises a fair question here as to how recused the top prosecutor actually was because she was communicating, continued to communicate with her office during the case.

NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, Jim, she has put out a statement and it reads in part, "After the incident became public I reached out to Joe," that's one of her assistants who had really taken lead on the case. "I reached out to Joe to discuss reviewing office policies to assure consistencies in our charging and our use of appropriate charging authority."

I mean, what this dump of communications really tells us is we get a little bit of an inkling of what was going on behind the scenes as this huge story was breaking in public and taking shocking and then some unexpected turns. I mean, first there was the shock of the attack that Smollett alleged to have taken place himself or someone in a MAGA hat that put a noose around his neck, he claimed.

Then of course the shock that we were told that in fact Smollett had staged this attack entirely himself. Then 16 class four felony charges, that was also a shock to people and then of course those charges all of them dramatically dropped.

Now what we have learned is that perhaps the Cook County state's attorney's office wasn't quite prepared for the magnitude of this case, the reaction to the dropping of those charges. Remember, the city was outraged, the police superintendent was outraged. They are now actually suing Jussie Smollett, the city, to try and get compensation for the investigation.

One assistant in Kim Foxx's office on the day those charges were dropped she wrote, "Just wish I could have anticipated the magnitude of this response and planned a bit better." And we also do, Jim, get an inkling of why those charges were dropped. Kim Foxx says, you know, "I'm recused but when people accuse us of overcharging cases 16 counts in a class felony becomes exhibit A." She goes on, "Pedophile with four victims 10 counts, washed-up celeb who lied to cops 16. Just because we can charge something doesn't mean we should," -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Nick Watt, thanks very much.

Let's speak now to CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson.

So, Joey Jackson, the key question here is was she actually recused if she's communicating in this way, particularly when she says and you heard Nick there just quoting from her text messages, just because we can charge should we charge, in effect after her deputy issues the charges saying you went too far. Is that recusal?

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: You know, Jim, good morning to you. I see it another way and what I see is not necessarily her into meddling in the Smollett case but I see her overwhelming frustration with what prosecutors do and it's something that happens to me, many of my defense attorney colleagues and in fact when I was a prosecutor really railed against as well and that is overcharging.

And that's an issue that not only needs to be looked at in Chicago, it needs to be looked at in New York, it needs to be looked at in Florida, it needs to be looked at all across the country. Prosecutors have tremendous power and authority and so she's railing on the issue and the fact that, look, let's be sensible. This is a case that's eligible for deferred prosecution. What that means in English is that at the end of the day this guy is not even going to be prosecuted.

We're going to dismiss it if he meets certain conditions. Why are we charging him with 16 counts but yet there is a pedophile with four victims, I'm characterizing her quotation, and she says but they get 10 counts. What are we doing? Should we not --

(CROSSTALK)

SCIUTTO: Well, what about --

JACKSON: Mm-hmm?

SCIUTTO: What about undercharging? Right? I mean, and again, I'm not the lawyer here, I'm just saying it went from zero to 16, and then 16 back to zero it seemed. You had 16 counts, now he's going to agree to forfeit $10,000 in bail and do community service here.

JACKSON: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Because it raises questions not just about -- and again, you know, you and I aren't the judges here, other folks have to make these judgments, but if you have the chief prosecutor saying those 16 charges are too much and then all of a sudden you don't have any, that's a pretty remarkable turn.

JACKSON: Yes, I get it. So there are two real issues that we could discuss, one is, was the Smollett case handled appropriately or was it not? I think that many people would look at it, me included, and say it wasn't. Right? Why not just come out and level with everyone and say, hey, this is a case that's eligible for deferred prosecution, we charged him with 16 counts, we do believe we can prove him guilty, in fact, we are going to allow him to enter a plea of guilty and then he's going to do community service, he's going to do such other things, and then a year from now, which generally is how deferred prosecutions work, we're going to dismiss the charges if he handles everything properly.

That wasn't done. Instead it was a shroud of secrecy. They had an emergency hearing when they didn't need to. We're missing everything, Jussie Smollett comes out and says hey, I'm innocent. I never do this to anybody and anyone. So we can have the discussion about how it was handled, that's being something subject to an internal review, Jim. The FBI, right, our indications are looking at that as well.

At the end of the day, prosecutors locally can do what they want to do.

SCIUTTO: Right --

JACKSON: The separate and larger discussion, I think she's pointing to is what are we doing as prosecutors when we're doing multiple --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

JACKSON: Charges on people. That's a discussion I think everyone needs to have, and that's a discussion I agree with.

SCIUTTO: Joey Jackson, always good to have you.

JACKSON: Thank you, Jim, I appreciate you.

SCIUTTO: Still to come at this hour, just one day away from the release of the redacted Mueller report with one GOP aide telling CNN that President Trump is, quote, "going to go bonkers when it is released." And happening right now, firefighters in Paris speaking about that devastating inferno at Notre Dame.

We are watching for all the breaking details, stay with us.

[09:20:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Here in Washington, the nation's capital, a moment 22 months in the making is now just 24 hours away. It is the public release of the Mueller report as edited, perhaps heavily edited by the Attorney General appointed by this president whose initial report to Congress led the president and his allies to falsely claim total exoneration.

They're still claiming that and are likely to claim it tomorrow, regardless of what we see. But privately, anxiety, even dread inside that building there are said to be running high. White House staffers are said to be bracing for revelations that could be at the very least unflattering and could enrage the president by exposing their own cooperation with the special counsel.

For their part, Democrats are bracing, too, for a let-down over parts of the report that the AG decides to blackout. Joining me now to discuss former NSA Attorney Susan Hennessey and Jackie Kucinich; she is Washington Bureau chief for the "Daily Beast".

Susan, if I could begin with you, help folks at home who have been following this for a long time, and they're like, OK, what am I going to learn tomorrow that I didn't already know. And I know you don't know that because you and I haven't seen that report. But what kind of -- what categories of information might we learn tomorrow that we don't know today?

SUSAN HENNESSEY, NATIONAL SECURITY AND LEGAL ANALYST CNN: Well, so we know that the report is divided into two parts, largely because of Bill Barr's summary letter about it. So we know that Robert Mueller believes that there is a significant evidence on both sides of the obstruction question.

So what that evidence looks like in terms of whether it confirms reporting that's already been out there, including some information that the White House continues to deny or whether or not it clears, you know, and --

SCIUTTO: Right --

HENNESSEY: Produces exonerating evidence on that count. Certainly, we will learn some information in that bucket, sort of on the Russia collusion question, we'll see an even more detailed account about what the Russians did on the Russian side.

We know that the special counsel's office didn't find chargeable criminal conduct on the part of any Americans and sort of colluding with the Russians. But we are going to see hopefully more details about what might have happened that fell below that sort of that --

SCIUTTO: Right --

HENNESSEY: Criminal threshold.

SCIUTTO: Jackie, the closer call for the special counsel appears to be on the obstruction question.

JACKIE KUCINICH, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE DAILY BEAST,CNN COMMENTATOR: Right --

SCIUTTO: Because he said it right out, I can't exonerate the president, but I'm not charging, left it to the attorney general to decide. Presumably then, we might see more evidence we don't know already about what the president did or tried to do to allegedly obstruct the investigation.

KUCINICH: Well, I want to just pause for a second, talking about the information that we know already. And Susan alluded to this. There are things that the White House still denies, we were talking about this earlier --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

KUCINICH: That could be in this report that confirms reporting that's been done, that not on the White House, but on the Hill, Republicans have been denying. So the impulse to be like, no, we know that. Well, is the White House still denying it because --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

KUCINICH: That's incumbent on us to say, OK, now what? To those members and to folks at the White House on the obstruction --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

KUCINICH: Question. I think all of us are going to be looking to see how that conclusion was reached and what evidence there is that, you know, that may have muddied the water.

SCIUTTO: Sure --

KUCINICH: Whether that, you know, that's included in testimony or, you know --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

KUCINICH: What isn't redacted in there.

SCIUTTO: You know, seriously, one thing we should do, drop all discussion of narrative, what the established narrative is because that has a life of its own and may not be connected to the facts here. You still have a process, do you not, Susan, that if there is evidence in here that some -- does Congress has the ability to decide what to do next if they do.

And I don't want to mention impeachment arbitrarily here, but if members and enough members see evidence in there that they consider significant enough, folks could decide to go down that path. I imagine -- I mean, that's the only recourse now at this point because the Attorney General has already made his judgment. If anything happens, it's going to happen in the political realm.

HENNESSEY: Sure, that was always true with respect to the president sort of specifically. Now, we're likely to see sort of a war over this obstruction question, Mueller declined to render a traditional prosecutorial judgment about whether or not the president had obstructed justice in the criminal sense.

Now, that even though the president couldn't have been charged and certainly wouldn't be charged at this point, the reason why sort of the criminal interpretation is still going to be significant is because you have substantial members -- a number of members of Congress, including Democrats, who essentially don't believe it's proper to move to impeachment proceedings unless there is --

SCIUTTO: Right --

HENNESSEY: An actual belief that the president has violated --

SCIUTTO: Right --

HENNESSEY: A law. And so that -- SCIUTTO: And also because Democrats have told me and I'm sure have

told you as well, also unless they believe they can get Republican support --

HENNESSEY: Exactly --

SCIUTTO: For that kind of pursuit, right? Because they know as a practical matter, they can't pursue this on their own credibly.

KUCINICH: Well, right, and sort of a wall --

SCIUTTO: If they were to go down --

KUCINICH: In the Senate. So --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

KUCINICH: Yes, they're not -- they're not going to walk off a cliff and just cast a bunch of votes and put --

SCIUTTO: Right --

KUCINICH: Their members who maybe don't want to be talking about this on record. So Nancy Pelosi has said that, you know, yes, they're going to wait for the Mueller report, but I think she said he's not worth it --

[09:25:00] SCIUTTO: Yes, and she --

KUCINICH: Because it also -- because it also will throw the country into turmoil.

HENNESSEY: It does risk sort of overly focusing on the legal questions at the expense of asking yourselves the broader question which is whether it's a crime or not, is this acceptable conduct --

SCIUTTO: By the president.

HENNESSEY: By a president --

SCIUTTO: Which is fair, before we go, two simple things for our viewers to look out for tomorrow in what is going to be a 400, you know, redacted, but a lot of stuff coming -- you know, this is like a term paper coming their way. A lot to digest in a short period of time. Just for both of you, what is one thing you would look for and you as well, Jackie?

HENNESSEY: So, I'm certainly going to be looking for the degree of redactions, particularly the degree of redactions in those more discretionary category. So classified information that they might have pushed to have declassified, the extent of grand jury information that was included, and then that big bucket which is information that bears on peripheral third parties.

SCIUTTO: Right --

HENNESSEY: If there is a huge number of redactions that's going to raise really serious questions about whether the American --

SCIUTTO: Right --

HENNESSEY: Public is getting the full story.

SCIUTTO: And we know Democrats, they want to pursue an unredacted or at least a less redacted report if they're not satisfied. How about you, Jackie?

KUCINICH: Starting on Friday actually --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

KUCINICH: Probably the subpoenas will start. You know, I'm going to go, again, to what the White House has denied and what this confirms.

SCIUTTO: Yes --

KUCINICH: That has been reported. And this White House has waged an unprecedented war against the press and trying to degrade our credibility.

SCIUTTO: Right --

KUCINICH: How much of this exonerates the reporting and will -- and sheds light on --

SCIUTTO: It's good, does it expose another lie by --

KUCINICH: Right --

SCIUTTO: The president or his allies? We know you're going to be watching it tomorrow, we are certainly going to be as well. Please, tune into us tomorrow, we're going to learn a lot. Susan Hennessey and Jackie Kucinich, thanks very much.

Happening right now, firefighters in Paris speaking about the devastating inferno at Notre Dame, this as the French Prime Minister announces a contest to design and rebuild Notre Dame's famous spire. We're going to be live in Paris next with all the latest.

And we're just moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street as U.S. and China trade negotiators still work to end their long-running dispute. New data out of China shows its economy grew by more than expected in the first quarter, how does that affect the talks? We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:30:00]