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Jeffrey Epstein Found Dead in Prison After Committing Suicide; Journalists Examine History of Reporting on Jeffrey Epstein's Activities with Young Girls; El Paso Community Gathers after Mass Shooting; Nevada Man with neo-Nazi Ties Arrested for Plotting to Bomb Synagogues and Gay Clubs; Company Provides Nutrition for Honey Bees to Improve Pollination; President Trump Comments on Possible Gun Control Legislation Examined. Aired 10-11a ET
Aired August 10, 2019 - 10:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[10:00:00] MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: -- our viewers in the U.S. and around the world.
CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: So this hour, the breaking news. Officials say Jeffrey Epstein, the multimillionaire, in jail on charges that he sex-trafficked underaged girls, as died a suicide.
SAVIDGE: Epstein previously had been moved to a suicide watch unit after being found unconscious in his cell in July. Prosecutors say that Epstein sexually abused dozens of young girls for years at his home in Palm Beach, Florida, and New York. Some of his alleged victims were said to be as young as 14.
Let's bring in Kara Scannell. She has been covering this case for some time. Kara, what do you know about the means by which he died and how he was discovered?
KARA SCANNELL, CNN REPORTER: Well, Martin, we're still getting information on this, but two law enforcement sources say that Epstein was found in his jail cell Saturday morning in cardiac arrest, and that he died at a local New York hospital later. So the details of exactly how he died are still being -- we're still ascertaining those details. But we can confirm from two law enforcement sources that he died by suicide and was found in his jail cell in cardiac arrest this morning.
This comes, as you say, after just last month when Epstein was found in his cell unconscious with some marks around his neck, and was moved to a suicide watch unit. So there are a lot of questions here about how this did happen just several weeks after that initial attempt, and how did he have the means to be successful this time in killing himself this morning.
PAUL: Right, and the timing of this may be questionable to some as well, because just in the last 24 hours there were hundreds of pages of previously sealed documents from the defamation suit that were unsealed, and there were some really lurid details in there from accuser Virginia Giuffre. This suit was settled, by the way, in 2017, but she was claiming that she was a sex slave of his. Would the release of those documents have anything to do with his suicide? SCANNELL: Well, the pressure on Epstein has been mounting since his
arrest last month by the prosecutors in New York. A lot of details about Epstein's alleged abuse of the women and, he did plead guilty in Florida state court in 2008. He had a non-prosecution agreement with the federal prosecutors related to the same allegations, that he had abused young girls from as young as 14, that he had done this across country, including a home of his in the Caribbean Islands. There are allegations that he had brought women on his plane to New York where he was charged.
So while the ideas in some of these allegations about Epstein have been in the public domain both in the criminal cases and then in a multiple civil lawsuits brought by accusers, the attention with these criminal charges in New York has brought all of that back up to the surface. And then you have people coming forward. You had these documents that are being unsealed. So the breadth of the scheme that Epstein was alleged to have been involved with, the sex trafficking scheme, has really come out in a lot more detail, in a much higher profile way, and in the post #MeToo movement where people are listening to accusers more. So the pressure on him is mounting. He was facing as much as 45 years in prison if convicted. The prosecutors said that they heard from multiple people saying that they had -- multiple people had come forward after they brought their case. So it certainly was not going to get any easier for Epstein, and he knew that more information was coming out, more women were speaking up now. They felt that they could.
He's such a powerful man. Prosecutors said he had -- they suggested he had paid off people to stay quiet. So the pressure on him is mounting. He knew that. And he knew that he probably was not going to be walking out of that prison alive.
SAVIDGE: Kara Scannell, who has been following this story closely for us, thank you very much.
And on the line now is Vicky Ward. She is a former investigative reporter for "Vanity Fair" who wrote a profile of Jeffrey Epstein. Good morning, Vicky.
VICKY WARD, FORMER INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, "VANITY FAIR": Good morning.
SAVIDGE: You just tweeted this. I tried to warn you about Epstein in 2003. What's your reaction to the news now?
WARD: Well, I think that that was among my sources there was considerable concern that this is exactly what would happen. I agree with Kara, there are going to be questions asked as to why it happened if he was placed on suicide watch. That's supposed to make suicide, if that's what it is, difficult. But the other side of the Jeffrey Epstein story is the financial mystery.
[10:05:03] And one of my sources, the moment he went to jail, was very clear that Jeffrey Epstein had a lot of information on very powerful people, and you already saw just this week Leslie Wexner, the founder and chairman of the Limited group, the enormous retail chain, coming out saying he had given Jeffrey Epstein power of attorney and had discovered in 2007 that Jeffrey Epstein had, in fact, stolen millions and millions and millions of dollars from him. That in turn asks the question, why did Leslie Wexner not go to the authorities at the time? Jeffrey Epstein has been linked in the cases that have come up with Bill Clinton, with Leon Black, who kept him on his family's foundation until very recently, knowing full well that by then Jeffrey Epstein had gone and served a smaller jail sentence based on charges in Florida.
These all raise questions, what is it that tied these very powerful people to Jeffrey Epstein in the lawsuits that were unveiled yesterday. Yes, again, it's not the first time Prince Andrew's name has been raised as someone that Virginia Giuffre claimed Jeffrey Epstein asked her to have sex with. The palace denies it.
But I think that what's always been fascinating about having Jeffrey Epstein incarcerated is who else could he potentially bring down? The indictment talked about a conspiracy, which generally tends to mean other people are involved. And I think that one and more of my sources felt that the other people that could potentially lose a great deal if Jeffrey Epstein ever took the stand.
PAUL: Jeffrey Epstein -- OK, so you're saying Jeffrey Epstein had a lot to lose. Are you saying -- was he afraid of somebody?
WARD: I'm saying other people had a lot to lose.
PAUL: I'm sorry, OK, I just wanted to make sure that I clarified that. Was Jeffrey Epstein afraid of anyone with all of this mystery, with all of these powerful people?
WARD: Well, I think not being able to go -- not getting bail was very significant for him. Kara talked about pressure mounting because if he -- the moment he was stuck in jail, he was no longer able to continue to pay people, including people like lawyers, household staff, people who over the years would have been loyal to Jeffrey Epstein who prosecutors have been very clear that he has had a track record of paying off anyone he thought might talk about him. And I think that that created a real jeopardy for him. His pilots were getting lawyered up, so that tells you that he must have been sitting there wondering, for the first time perhaps, who was going to turn on him.
SAVIDGE: Do you believe that some of the others we've spoken to this morning that as a result of his death there are likely to be more people who come forward, some may be victims, some may be associates, but now feeling that there won't be any retribution, their fear lifted?
WARD: It's possible victims will come forward, but I think a lot of the people who would have -- whose name would have surfaced, whose connections to Jeffrey Epstein were more mysterious, will not, because why would they? Now that he's dead, what's the --
PAUL: Well, I guess only if they come forward with possible civil suits is what somebody was talking about. I do want to ask you about your tweet this morning. You said, I tried to warn you about Epstein in 2003. Vicky, what does that mean?
WARD: So that means that I wrote an article for "Vanity Fair" that was published in 2003. Nobody at that time knew who Jeffrey Epstein was. He was a mysteriously rich man who had a big, impressive rolodex and had these parties where these very young women were in attendance, and many of them didn't speak English.
[10:10:06] And no one knew how he made his money or who he really was. The piece explained that he was not what he claimed to be. He wasn't a money manager for numerous billionaires. He had, in fact, been trained by someone who went to jail for the largest Ponzi scheme in American history prior to Bernie Madoff.
What the piece also discovered was that he did abuse women. And I talked to two sisters who both allege they'd been abused by Jeffrey Epstein, one of them when she was underage. They were on record, their mother was on record. Other people in New York with considerable reputation and standing were on record. But Jeffrey Epstein went to see the editor of the magazine, Graydon Carter, and after that I was told that Jeffrey Epstein was very sensitive about the women, and they ended up being cut out of my article.
They were obviously extremely upset, as was I. And they said -- I said do you want to pursue this in a different avenue? And they said no because this is exactly what we were afraid of, that we wouldn't be believed because he is the more powerful known figure, and who are we? This is exactly why it's taken us years to even to come forward at that point. They are two of the women who recently, one of them, Annie Farmer, was one of the women who stood up at Jeffrey Epstein's bail hearing and recommended to Judge Berman that he not be given jail because it would prevent other victims from coming forward. Her sister Maria Farmer gave an affidavit about what happened in the Virginia Giuffre case.
PAUL: Vicky Ward, thank you so much for walking us through what you've learned and in your history of covering him. Thank you. We appreciate it so much.
We have more for you regarding our breaking news coverage on the apparent suicide of Jeffrey Epstein.
SAVIDGE: What happens to the legal case moving forward? That's a big question in many people's minds. Might anyone else be brought to justice? We'll see.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:16:15] SAVIDGE: We are continuing to follow the breaking news this morning, multimillionaire financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has committed suicide.
PAUL: At the time of his death he was awaiting trial and facing the possibility of 45 years in federal prison. CNN legal analyst Paul Callan and CNN crime and justice reporter Shimon Prokupecz is with us by phone. Gentlemen, thank you for being with us. Shimon, I want to go to you first. What do we know about how this happened? Because he had, according to reports, tried to commit suicide before. So you would think that they would have been -- being in federal custody, they would have been very closely watching him.
SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Yes, you would certainly think that, and good morning, guys. This just should not have happened, right, given this prior incident that we've all reported on involving him at the jail. There's going to have to be a lot of answers really for how this happened. He was probably the most high-profile inmate, at least that we know of right now that's in that jail. This is the same jail that was housing El Chapo when he was on trial, Paul Manafort's been there, Bernie Madoff has been there. There have been some very high-profile defendants that have been in that jail. And they usually get special attention, and in this case, we know that he was getting special attention because of the nature of his charges and how high profile he was. So this for the jail, this is certainly should not have happened, especially given who he is.
The other thing for our viewers and for you guys, just to give you a little bit of a timeline, it was early, early this morning that there was first indications that there was a problem. It was around 6:30, 6:40 a.m. that the first call went out for an ambulance to respond to the jail for someone in cardiac arrest. And what I'm told is he -- Jeffrey Epstein was -- the hospital medical team was administering CPR when the first ambulance arrived on the scene, he was in the medical office, so the jail staff had removed him from his jail cell and brought him to the medical unit where they were treating him. And after that, just a few minutes after that, he was taken to the hospital there in downtown Manhattan, and that is where he died, I'm told.
SAVIDGE: All right, Paul Callan, I want to bring you into the conversation here. We know that the federal sex trafficking charges were filed against Epstein last month. You don't prosecute a dead man, I get it, but there were others that were being implemented here. So does the investigation continue?
PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, the investigation will continue, but it will be conducted more by the attorneys handling the civil litigation than by law enforcement authorities in the United States. Obviously criminal charges can't be lodged against a dead person, so the question is, though, can civil cases for money damages be brought by other and new victims, and the answer to that is yes. The estate of Jeffrey Epstein will soon come into existence. And that estate, you can imagine, would be sued by a lot of potential victims, so his suicide will not end coverage and interest in the Jeffrey Epstein case.
PAUL: Paul, I wanted to ask you about something, a very good point that Shimon brought up, was how did this happen. What could the -- could there be a new investigation, obviously, I'm assuming there will be, into how he was able to kill himself while in prison while in custody?
[10:20:00] CALLAN: Yes, I think Shimon makes a great point. And I've had clients myself incarcerated there. This is one of the most important leading federal incarceration place in New York City for high-profile people, El Chapo was there for a long time. A lot of the terrorist cases that have been prosecuted in recent years, those terrorists have been held at MCC.
What's especially surprising is when you have an individual who has made a suicide attempt, he is supposed to be placed on 24-hour suicide watch because he may try to kill himself again. And the reports we have now, of course, are that he hung himself this morning. That was exactly what he was alleged to have tried to do a couple of weeks ago. So he should have been under 24-hour guard, and I would expect that heads will roll in the federal prison system for this lax in proper security for a particularly high-profile prisoner.
SAVIDGE: It raises a lot of questions in a lot of people's minds. Paul Callan and Shimon Prokupecz, thank you very much. We'll be right back after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PAUL: We have new video to share with you from the shooting in El Paso, Texas, last Saturday. I do want to warn you, I don't want you to be caught off guard here, that these images are pretty upsetting.
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(SHOUTING)
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[10:25:03] PAUL: It's cell phone video there showing the Walmart parking lot just moments after the attack. You hear the people yelling for help, and there are people who are running from the scene, victims are on the ground. It's tough.
SAVIDGE: The man accused of killing those 22 people and wounding 24 others said that he did deliberately target Mexicans, and sources say that Patrick Crusius specifically picked El Paso for the attack. He's been charged with capital murder.
PAUL: And about 30 minutes from now, a community march is going to be held in El Paso.
SAVIDGE: The census bureau says more than 80 percent of the city's residents are of Hispanic or Latino descent, and they're worried that their community is being targeted for the color of the skin. CNN's Natasha Chen joins us now from El Paso. And how strong are those fears there?
NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we talked to one of the local organizers of this event today who said that a lot of people here locally are very afraid. He talked about his three-year-old niece, I believe, who told her dad please don't go out. I don't want you to get shot. So even small children are understanding the weight of what's going on. They understand that there is something here, this force that is making them the target of some hate here, and that is why these people want to come out today. They want to show a show of force here despite their fears. This is one of the buttons that's being passed around. I'll hold it
steady here. It says "March for a United America," and this is a button made by the organization LULAC putting on this rally today. What they're going to do is they're going to have a set of speakers on the stage behind us, and then they're going to start marching just several blocks down the streets here, downtown El Paso, reaching the courthouse which is that large glass building behind us there. We are expecting to hear from presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke who's expected to attend over there when they finish walking.
So this is a very tense environment, but it's an opportunity, the organizers say, to show a force of unity, and to show people that words matter. They also made sure to tell me that they felt the president should take accountability for the words that he says because they know how much weight they hold with many people in this country, and they want to show that they are standing here against racism today.
PAUL: Natasha Chen in El Paso there, thank you for bringing that to us.
CHEN: Thank you.
SAVIDGE: This morning a Nevada man with neo-Nazi ties is under arrest for plotting to bomb synagogues and gay clubs.
PAUL: In fact, the Justice Department says they have now found bomb making plans at his Las Vegas home. CNN's Polo Sandoval is looking into this. What else do we know about the arrest, Polo?
POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Christi and Martin, I can tell you that this has been the result of a lengthy investigation here that we've been following. Yesterday the Department of Justice making those details official here when it comes to this investigation. This 24-year-old individual that authorities had been tracking, investigators believe that he was essentially exchanging encrypted messages with various organizations, so would in essence encourage him to launch attacks on a downtown Nevada synagogue, and also a location that he believed was a gay bar.
So investigators moving in, arresting him, detaining him, and of course those charges are still pending. CNN currently working to make contact with this individual at this point, when it comes to these allegations, but he does certainly face at least a 10-year prison sentence. We should also mention that it is -- we're learning about this a week after this individual drove all the way to El Paso and then carried out this attack, and then according to investigators saying that he was specifically targeting Mexican-Americans. And so this is certainly disturbing as we continue to follow that story in the Las Vegas area. Guys, back to you.
SAVIDGE: All right, Polo Sandoval, thanks very much for the update.
SANDOVAL: You bet.
PAUL: When we come back, sources tell CNN Jeffrey Epstein, the multimillionaire in jail on charges that he sex trafficked underaged girls, has died by suicide. We're going to hear from Julie K. Brown. She's been covering this story for the "Miami Herald" for quite some time. Stay close.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:32:50] SAVIDGE: Earlier this morning we spoke with Julie K. Brown. She's the investigative reporter for the "Miami Herald" whose explosive reporting led to the new charges against Epstein.
PAUL: Jeffrey Epstein, of course, he has taken his own life, we have learned this morning. And Julie says that his death will not put an end to this investigation.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JULIE K. BROWN, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, "MIAMI HERALD": Well, I'm pretty surprised. He had tried -- allegedly tried this before, so you would have thought they would have been paying pretty close attention to him and had people really watching him. He should have been on suicide watch as it is, so it's kind of surprising.
PAUL: There's word that he hung himself. It was an apparent hanging in the jail, again, that's according to the "New York Times," and that's their reporting according to other officials. And what's interesting about this is one of the other lead stories today were these hundreds of pages of previously sealed documents that were unsealed yesterday from one of his accusers, Virginia Giuffre's defamation suit. Tell us about -- tell us about that. Do you think that he had gotten word that that had happened?
BROWN: Yes, of course he got word of that. The documents that were released yesterday were pretty damning. They included the names of some people, very powerful people. And he doesn't look like he's going to be -- he wouldn't have left jail anytime soon. Sort of the walls were crashing in on him. And this isn't a man who's used to living life like this. Even when he was jailed here in Florida, he had a pretty cushy existence, being able to leave the jail every day with his own valet and going to his office and greeting guests. And so this kind of jail treatment that he was having in New York was a far cry from anything that he had had here before or ever really in his life.
SAVIDGE: Reportedly his body was found at 7:30 this morning in a Manhattan jail. Do you have any idea what happens to the investigation now? Of course it still continues, there are other people that are named, but it's a devastating blow regardless.
[10:35:08] BROWN: It is. But there's other records that they can get. They did a search warrant at his home, and they probably have other witnesses who, especially now, quite frankly -- all this time a lot of people who knew what he was doing were afraid to talk. They were really afraid of him. And so the question now becomes how many of those people are really going to stand up now and finally say I know he did this, and I was a witness to it. And I was just afraid to talk in the past. So in some ways it might open up the case even more because there will be people that maybe will not be as afraid to talk now.
PAUL: Wow, Julie, you've done so much reporting on this. And all of the time and effort that you've put into digging into this story, what has surprised you most?
BROWN: I think what has surprised me most is that there were so many people. This was -- he was almost hiding in plain sight. There were so many people that knew or suspected or saw things that were wrong. And you know, it's kind of upsetting to think that these girls were sort of almost collateral to some people's careers who kind of decided that this wasn't an important story or important enough of a crime that they should have pursued it or stood up and said, look, we've got to do something to stop him.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PAUL: Our thanks to Julie K. Brown who was speaking with us there a short while ago. We're going to continue to monitor that story, bring you updates as soon as we get them. And be sure to stay up to date with all the top stories right now at CNN.com.
SAVIDGE: And we want to switch it up a bit. Honey bees, which have been crucial in the pollination, have dramatically declined for a whole number of reasons. But some scientists are finding a creative way to make their performance and immune system work better. We have more on that in this week's Mission Ahead.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Bees are responsible for pollinating one-third of all crops worldwide, but pesticides, parasites, and climate change are all making it harder for bees to survive, and populations are declining, impacting the nearly $20 billion they contribute to U.S. crop production. In fact, this past winter saw the highest honey bee colony losses on record. But the company BeeFlow thinks they can give bees a boost with a nutrient packed super food formula they say improves their performance and immune system.
MATIAS VIEL, BEEFLOW CEO: Some people say we say we are doing super bees. We say we are developing strong and smart bees.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Feed the bees the formula, and they can work longer and in colder temperatures, helpful for crops like these almond trees in California, which have short pollination windows.
VIEL: Very close from here, we've done a trial where we see that our bees were doing seven times more flights under really cold temperatures.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With no automated way to monitor bee performance, the BeeFlow team spends hours each day staring at trees counting bees.
VIEL: We know how many bees the flower requires to develop a fruit of x size. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So far, it's working. In Argentina, their
trials increase crop yields up to 90 percent and made fruit like these blueberries in Oregon 22 percent bigger.
At the moment, BeeFlow knows it can't address ever issue impacting bees, so for now their goal is to make what we already have better.
VIEL: There's a lot of questions that are still waiting for answers, and we think that this is just the start of our journey on pollination that has been underestimated by the agriculture industry.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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[10:43:04] PAUL: It's 42 minutes past the hour, and Democrats are taking a much stronger stance on gun control than they have in the past. CNN political commentator Maria Cardona with us now, a Democratic strategist, and CNN political commentator Alice Stewart, a Republican strategist. Ladies, always so good to see you. Thank you so much.
ALICE STEWART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning.
MARIA CARDONA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning.
PAUL: Let's listen together here to a couple of things. First of all, President Trump back in February of 2018, what he said about gun laws then, and what he told Representative Sherrod Brown just this week on Wednesday.
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DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're going to be very strong on background checks. We're going to be doing very strong background checks, very strong emphasis on the mental health of somebody. And we are going to do plenty of other things. It's not going to be talk like it has been in the past. It's been going on too long, too many instances, and we're going to get it done.
SEN. SHERROD BROWN, (D-OH): I asked the president to promise to me and to the American people that he will sign that bill after he's spoken out in support of it with Senator McConnell. He only said that we will get things done.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL: So hearing the same verbiage from the president, we will get things done, the problem is there was a year-and-a-half in between both of those statements. Alice, what is the Republican commonsense strategy to this? And really, do we know where the president stands?
STEWART: We do. And he's made it quite clear in the last few days that they are having serious discussions. And the Republican response to this is let's look at meaningful ways to control crime and not just control guns. And they are making progress. I have an op-ed on CNN today where I really think it's important for us to seriously look at making some changes. I'm an NRA member. I'm a gun owner. I strongly support Second Amendment rights. Many other Republicans here in Washington feel the same way, that it's time to take some action.
[10:45:03] They are looking at these red flag laws, which are critical and will go a long way to addressing many of the issues that are dealing with these mass shootings. And it's not just about the guns. It is about looking at ways to prevent people that are a threat to themselves or others. This allows family members and the police to appeal to the courts and slow down the weapons process for them to acquire weapons, but also considers the mental health aspect of this. This is something I say can and should be done on short order. And looking at the background checks, expanding and making those more critical in the weapons access process, these are things that need to get done and can be done. And the president says he's in favor of these measures. It's just a matter of making sure the NRA has concerns about making sure protections for due process are in place and does not infringe on overall Second Amendment rights. But I do see that we will make some progress.
PAUL: Maria?
CARDONA: I hope Alice is right. The problem is, as you pointed out earlier, Christi, is that the president has said those exact same words before, and then what ends up happening, he has continued conversations with the NRA, and he kowtows to what they want, which is absolutely no change, no additional gun safety laws, no additional restrictions on anything.
And the problem is the president said the right things in terms of wanting to do something meaningful on background checks. He said Mitch McConnell was with him. We have not heard Mitch McConnell say anything in terms of being in agreement with the president. He doesn't even want to bring back the Senate immediately to try to do something. They don't come back for another month, Christi.
And we all know very well if this does not stay on the front burner, on the front pages, that people will forget about it. That's exactly what the NRA wants. The NRA wants people to forget this moment and then to continue on, and then nothing will get done.
So I'm sorry, but until the president is in the oval office signing legislation that he says there is a lot of support for, I am not going to believe a word he says.
PAUL: So Alice, the red flags law is going to be something that probably a lot of people on both sides of the aisle can get behind, no doubt about it. But when it comes to the assault weapons ban -- and thank you, you're a member of the NRA, you talked about. Please help people understand why anyone would think that a normal human being needs to have a military grade weapon?
STEWART: Yes, that's a great question. And the important thing is to look at the classifications of certain weapons that are in the assault weapons ban. The AR-15 is one. This is a weapon that is the most popular rifle that many Americans have. This is used in their homes for their safety, and it needs to be protected. So the conversation with regard to an assault weapons ban does need to begin. It's something we should look at. But this is a matter of making sure --
PAUL: But you can protect yourself with a handgun. Why does it have to be an assault weapon?
CARDONA: An AR-15 is a rifle that is not a high capacity magazine attached to it. And high capacity magazines, I do believe, let's talk -- let's have that conversation. Adam Kinzinger has said that's something that has to be looked at.
PAUL: But how is the NRA going to take that?
STEWART: The NRA certainly has concerns because the key is to make sure that this does not infringe on every American's Second Amendment right to bear arms. And this is important to make sure that we keep a lot of these very dangerous weapons out of the hands of people that don't deserve them, and protecting Second Amendment rights.
But I do want to push back on my friend Maria on one of the points she's made, saying this administration has done nothing. If you recall after the Las Vegas shootings, they did get together and Congress did act on bump stocks and banning bump stocks, which were used in that tragedy. And if you look at the Parkland shootings, there were more stringent protections on the FixNix system, which is the notification with regard to background checks. So it's inaccurate to say nothing has been done. But again --
CARDONA: Nothing meaningful, though, Alice.
PAUL: Here's the thing, in New Zealand, after the shooting at Christchurch, they enacted new strict laws, permanent laws, within four weeks.
CARDONA: Yes.
PAUL: A lot of people look at this and say, if you didn't do anything after Newtown in 2012, six-and-a-half years ago, why would we -- what makes us believe that anything's going to happen now. And it doesn't matter -- Maria, the Democrats have had both houses. They've had the House. They've had the Senate at times. President Barack Obama was president, they had an opportunity to craft some real solid legislation as well.
CARDONA: No, I completely agree with you.
[10:50:00] And this is why if we don't do something now, I don't think we'll ever do anything, Christi. But the fact of the matter is there has been a bill on Mitch McConnell's desk since February that Democrats passed that goes to fully implementing universal background checks. So again, if the president is going to be true to his words, he will call Mitch McConnell today, tell him to get himself and all the other senators back to D.C., and do something on this.
Look, nothing is going to change until we stop giving guns out like it's candy on Halloween in this country. You can talk about mental illness, but when Republicans strip mental health money from all of our health programs in the United States, you know that they are full of crap. And so until something is done, nothing is going to get done.
PAUL: Alice and Marie, I'm sorry. We've run out of time. Thank you both so much, ladies.
SAVIDGE: Next, we'll tell you about a moment of true bravery that probably helped save hundreds during the El Paso shooting.
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WOODY FAIRCLOTH, CNN HERO: As news of the fire broke and we saw more of what happened to people in the fire and how many people were impacted, that's when it really hit home that, wow, this is a really big deal. Tens of thousands lost their homes. Entire families were sleeping in their cars in parking lots. It was total chaos.
[10:55:00] Today, the majority are still displaced. When we actually hand over the title and the keys of an RV to someone who doesn't have a home any longer, it's such a powerful thing to provide such a basic human need. How can we not help if we're in a position to help?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL: To see Woody change the life of a Paradise grandmother, go to CNNHeroes.com right now.
SAVIDGE: As the community of El Paso, Texas, still struggles to heal a week after a mass shooting that left 22 people dead and another two dozen injured, we're learning more about what exactly happened inside that Walmart.
PAUL: In moments of great tragedy, obviously, there are often these moments of great courage and bravery. And here's a story of heroism from the manager of that Walmart, Robert Evans, who helped save hundreds of people by ushering customers to safety.
SAVIDGE: After getting customers to safety, he then ran to the front of the store to help some of the injured, a moment that shows that sometimes the best of humanity comes out during truly horrific times like a mass shooting.
PAUL: We are always so grateful that you spend some time with us on the weekends. We hope you make good memories today.
SAVIDGE: There is a whole lot more in the next hour of CNN Newsroom, and Fredricka Whitfield is up next.
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