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Gunman Kills Son, Wounds Husband of NJ Federal Judge; U.S. Coronavirus Cases Near 3.8 Million, More Than 140,000 Dead. Aired 6- 6:30a ET

Aired July 20, 2020 - 06:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[05:59:12]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Monday, July 20, 6 a.m., here in New York. And we do have breaking news overnight. A deadly shooting at the home of a federal judge in New Jersey.

A source tells CNN that the gunman appeared to be wearing a FedEx uniform. He opened fire at her front door, killing her son and critically injuring her husband. The federal judge has presided over several high-profile cases. We will bring you all of the latest details.

Also breaking right now, police firing tear gas at protesters in Portland, Oregon. Protesters want answers about the presence of unidentified federal officers in the crowd. A live report from that scene.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Also overnight, 61,000 new cases of coronavirus in the United States. The death toll now tops 140,000 Americans.

More than 12,000 new cases were reported in Florida, where dozens of hospital ICUs are at capacity. Arizona is reporting a record death toll, as well.

And the president, he's bored with it. That is a remarkable quote in "The New York Times" this morning from a Republican political strategist.

This report says that some in the White House, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, want to avoid drawing attention to the pandemic, as if people won't notice the tens of thousands dead and millions infected.

We want to begin our coverage, though, with CNN's Brynn Gingras, live in North Brunswick, New Jersey, at the deadly shooting at a federal judge's home.

Brynn, it is extremely unusual and unsettling to see the home of a federal judge targeted. BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John. And this is a quiet

neighborhood. This morning, everyone's in their homes, but you can see behind me the crime scene tape up.

This is very much a massive investigation that's underway by the U.S. Marshals and also the FBI, trying to look for that one gunman, as we're being told by investigators, who opened fire, really, on the front doorstep of the home here behind me of U.S. District Court Judge of New Jersey, Esther Salas.

Now, what we're hearing, preliminary information from sources, is that the son of the judge, his name, Daniel Anderl, 20 years old, answered the door. His father, Mark Anderl, who's a criminal defense attorney, not far behind him. And this gunman opened fire, killing the son of that judge and also wounding her husband. Now, we don't know his condition, but we know he's at the hospital right now.

But what's really unclear this morning is the motive. Why did this happen, in addition to the fact of who did this?

We know from investigators that this gunman was disguised, wearing, from sources, we're learning, a FedEx uniform, though we don't know if it was actually a FedEx employee or someone just disguised that way. But still, a lot of questions.

As you guys mentioned, this judge has overseen or presided over some really high-profile cases, including the sentencing of "Real Housewives," Teresa and Joe Giudice, and also has been most recently part of the class action suit against Deutsche Banks and their overseeing of their own clients, high-profile clients, including sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Though we're learning from sources there were no threats, to their knowledge, against the judge.

So again, that motive is still very clear. This investigation still very much active this morning, guys.

CAMEROTA: And Brynn, very quickly. Her husband was also a criminal defense lawyer -- is a criminal defense lawyer, correct?

GINGRAS: Yes. He's a criminal defense attorney. Again, he's well- respected in this community. The mayor speaking out about him.

But it's unclear if there were any threats against him, as well. There's -- everyone is still going through all of sort of their case history to see if there's anything that sticks out that maybe points to a motive. Of course, taking a look at this scene, as well -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Brynn, thank you very much for reporting from the scene for us.

Joining us now is CNN senior law enforcement analyst and former FBI director Andrew McCabe.

Andy, wow. Where do you even begin investigating something like this? ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, so, Alisyn,

this is an incredibly serious and troubling act. It's -- it's kind of the worst nightmare anyone can imagine, right? You hear your doorbell go off. People in the house run to the door to answer it, and -- and of course, this horrible attack as a result.

So the FBI, I'm sure, is working -- this is an all hands on deck issue. There are very few things that are as serious to the FBI and to the Department of Justice than an attack on a federal judge. It happens incredibly rarely, but when it does, you can bet that every resource is being brought to bear on this.

So they'll be looking, first, at all of the judge and her husband and her son's contacts. They'll be trying to figure out who's been communicating with them, who might have been near them in the days and weeks leading up to this act.

They'll be looking at -- no doubt, looking at video coverage that might be present in the area. So many people have external video cameras on their -- on their homes these days. That can typically be a good source of information about individuals or vehicles that have been in the area. There's just a thousand different leads that they are looking at right now.

BERMAN: Obviously, any kind of premeditated attack, which this appears to be, is of enormous concern and a tragedy. When it's an attack on a federal judge or the home of a federal judge, that raises to it a whole new level, Andy, because it comes across as an attack on the justice system.

You said it is very rare, but it has happened before. In your experience, what types of things can it end up being?

MCCABE: John, there's an enormous spectrum of possible players here and people who could have been motivated by the judge -- current cases that are before the judge, past cases that she had been involved in or decided or influenced sentencings, things of that nature. Appeals that come to the judge from people from past cases or from other judges that she might be -- that she might have decided in a way that could have provoked some, you know, anger and response.

But that's just the judge. You have to then think about her husband, who is a criminal defense attorney, who unfortunately in that respectable line of work, you run across, often, some dangerous people, some people who are unsatisfied or unhappy with the way their own criminal situations have concluded.

[06:05:43]

So there's the same broad, broad scope of individuals who could possibly have wanted to bring harm to the judge or her husband or their son for that matter. So it's just an enormous, enormous range of people who could be potential subjects here.

I mean, look, the details are very scant. We don't know anything other than what Brynn just reported at the moment. But anytime you hear the name Jeffrey Epstein, obviously, it gets people's attention.

So if there was some sort of link between Deutsche Bank and Epstein as a client of some kind, I mean, there's just -- I can't even fathom the level of investigation that FBI agents are going to have to dig into with all of those different tentacles.

MCCABE: You're absolutely right, Alisyn. There's an enormous amount of work they're plowing through right now.

And really, every single person, every individual who had, you know, a matter of -- of serious implication before the judge is going to be throughout of. I would hate to of, even now, a commentator, but even more seriously in my prior work with the bureau, you don't ever want to make assumptions initially about who the most likely suspect is. You've really got to take a look at the evidence that's left behind at the scene to start to draw you to specific individuals.

So that's going to be surveillance. That's going to be vehicles that may have been encountered by the police in that area or seen or reported on by neighbors in the days and weeks leading up to this. It is likely that whoever was involved in this activity was probably at the judge's house on prior occasions, either just conducting surveillance or kind of test run, sorts of things.

So the fact that someone may have seen something relevant to this crime is, I'm sure, first of mind for the folks that are investigating it.

BERMAN: Who normally handles protection for federal judges, Andy? And what, generally speaking, will raise the security level? I image they're not under 24-hour protection.

MCCABE: They aren't, usually, unless there's a reason for that. So it's typically the federal Marshals Service that provides protection for judges. And they watch very carefully to understand if a judge is the subject of threatening activity, if there's internet traffic, or if there's just what we refer to as inappropriate contact.

Sometimes, as a high-profile person, someone who's known in the community, people who just want to make contact with you outside the courthouse will approach a judge or a prosecutor in public and try to give them materials, things of that nature.

So those are all sorts of things that will lead the marshals to believe that a judge might need extra protection. Of course, I don't know if that's happened in this situation, but if it has, that's something we'll be looking at very closely.

CAMEROTA: Andrew McCabe, thank you very much for helping us sort through these early breaking details and trying to figure out what federal investigators will be doing this morning. Thank you very much.

Also breaking overnight, new violent clashes in Portland, Oregon. Federal agents using tear gas to disperse protestors there. And there are growing calls for an investigation into the presence of unidentified federal officers patrolling the streets and arresting people.

CNN's Josh Campbell is live in Portland with these breaking details.

What have you learned, Josh?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Yes, good morning to you.

We're here in Portland, the epicenter of what served -- the epicenter of clashes night after night here. Well over 50 nights. You can see behind me, there's a camp that's been set up by some of these protesters. Still -- still several dozen people that are out here.

And there were a few days here where the authorities had erected a fence in this little park night after night. The protesters would take that fence down. You can see now tonight, authorities didn't even try. They're letting these protesters stay here.

A much different story, however, as we pan over to the federal building itself. You can see that there's still some people lingering about. This was the area that was defaced with some of the graffiti overnight. This was the scene of this clash, where you had protesters going up in instances where the police felt that they were engaged in some type of destructive behavior, such as launching fireworks at that building. The police came out in full force, launching crowd dispersants.

[06:10:11]

As we stand here right now, there is still very much the acrid smell of smoke, as well as tear gas is still lingering in this area. And just around this area, police were engaging protesters at different moments.

These protests have continued since the infusion of federal resources into Portland by the Trump administration. And what we continue to hear, not only from protesters -- they want the feds to leave -- but also city officials are distancing themselves from the federal government.

The mayor in Portland talked to our colleague, Jake Tapper, over the weekend. Listen here to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR TED WHEELER (D), PORTLAND, OREGON: What's happening here is we have dozens, if not hundreds of federal troops descending upon our city. And what they're doing is they are sharply escalating the situation. Their presence here is actually leading to more violence and more vandalism, and it's not helping this situation at all.

They're not wanted here. We haven't asked them here. In fact, we want them to leave.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMPBELL: Now, the feds are saying that they're here to protect federal property. However, the protesters, again, want them out. The mayor says that he wants them out.

It's also worth noting that, overnight, the Oregon -- the Portland Police Department put out a statement distancing themselves, saying that they were not involved in any of these violent clashes overnight.

A continued standoff here in Portland with no one in sight, guys.

CAMEROTA: Josh, when people say that these federal officers were unidentified, are they wearing some sort of identifying insignia? Who are they?

CAMPBELL: Yes. So the one real controversial moment that stemmed a lot of the outrage here was a viral video, showing two heavily-armed tactical officers approaching a man.

Now, they had police insignia, but you had bystanders asking these officers, Who are you? Who are you with?

They grab a man. They take him to an unmarked van, and then he is whisked away. And it took hours and hours for us to try to determine who those officers were.

Finally, U.S. Customs and Border Protection came out and said that they were his agents. The man was wanted for questioning, allegedly involved in some type of criminal activity.

But it was that moment where you have people, what the protesters are calling are snatch squads, grabbing people and then throwing them into unmarked vehicles, which is causing a lot of the questions here.

I can say this has also gotten the attention of federal elected officials. Just over the weekend, three very powerful chairs of the U.S. House of Representatives, our colleagues, Manu Raju and Greg Clary on Capitol Hill reporting, have now reached out to the inspectors general at the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Justice Department, asking for an independent investigation into the actions of officers, the federal agents here in Portland and other places around the country.

Again, just these questions about whether there is overreach, whether there is excessive use of force. Again, the feds say they're trying to protect federal property. A lot of other people that are watching this are saying that this could be overreach. That is one of the continued divides here between the parties.

Again, this is in addition to the protests, an additional aspect of this. You now have lawmakers wanting to investigate, get to the bottom of this -- John, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Josh, thank you very much for reporting from the ground for us.

So coronavirus cases are surging still across the country. We're going to bring you a status report on where the states are this morning.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [06:17:21]

BERMAN: Overnight, four states reporting record new coronavirus cases. By the end of the week, the U.S. could hit the sobering milestone of 4 million cases. The U.S. death toll, now higher than 140,000 Americans.

CNN's Dianne Gallagher live in Atlanta with the very latest -- Dianne.

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, John, as the president continues to play down the pandemic, more than 60,000 new cases were recorded just yesterday alone. States like here in Georgia and North Carolina posted record number of new cases over the weekend.

And in the hardest-hit areas, like Miami-Dade and Los Angeles County, they are now looking at the highest number of hospitalizations that they have seen yet.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GALLAGHER (voice-over): In the heart of Miami Beach's night life district, an 8 p.m. curfew, and fines starting at $50 when people fail to wear a mask. All efforts to help slow the spread of the coronavirus here and keep residents out of hospitals. At least 49 facilities across the state have no ICU beds available.

MAYOR FRANCIS SUAREZ (R), MIAMI: Our biggest factor is that, since we got out of the stay-at-home order in April, we've seen just an incredible growth in terms of the virus. You know, people have essentially behaved as if the virus didn't exist.

GALLAGHER: For the fourth time this month, Florida reporting over 12,000 new cases in one day.

DR. CELINE GOUNDER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: We had many states, Florida included, that lifted restrictions too early, that allowed people to go without masks, still don't mandate masks in many of these states, and that have allowed businesses to reopen in a way that's, frankly, really irresponsible when you have widespread community transmission.

GALLAGHER: Meantime in Washington, President Trump says it should be up to governors to decide, pushing back against the suggestion to nationally mandate facial coverings, despite the CDC and most health experts making it clear, Americans should wear them to prevent transmission of the virus.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, I want people to have a certain freedom. And I don't believe in that, no. And I don't agree with the statement that if everybody wear a mask, everything disappears.

GALLAGHER: And according to Trump, the days of the coronavirus will eventually be over.

TRUMP: I'll be right, eventually.

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I understand. TRUMP: I will be right eventually. You know, I said, it's going to disappear. I'll say it again.

WALLACE: But does that --

TRUMP: It's going to disappear.

WALLACE: Does that discredit you?

TRUMP: And I'll be right.

GALLAGHER: But there's no sign of the virus disappearing anytime soon. Instead, the average number of new weekly cases is rising in at least 31 states.

GOV. JARED POLIS (D-CO): We need to do better than we're doing, because cases are going up. That's clear. America as a whole is not doing well.

[06:20:04]

People are lapsing in -- in their caution, right? They're lapsing in their need to engage in social distancing.

GALLAGHER: Arizona passing a grim milestone, with its highest number of deaths in a single day since the start of the pandemic. California announcing over 9,300 new infections Sunday.

Los Angeles County accounted for more than 2,800 of those, most of them, people under the age of 41.

The mayor of Los Angeles says the city could soon be under another stay-at-home order.

MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI (D), LOS ANGELES: I think we're on the brink of that. It's not just what's opened and closed. It's also about what we do individually.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GALLAGHER: Now, President Trump also once again claimed that the surge in these numbers is related to a surge in testing.

So besides the obvious -- that more tests doesn't create infections, it just reveals them -- medical experts everywhere have said that the only way to get this pandemic under control is to increase testing and also reduce the amount of time that it takes to get those results back.

John, in hot spots across the country, those are both areas where we are lagging.

BERMAN: Yes. Dianne Gallagher in Atlanta. Look, the president's statements are not true, and they're not helpful, frankly. And in some cases, they may be holding back progress in fighting this pandemic. Joining us now, Dr. Jason Wilson. He's the associate director of

emergency medicine and an emergency room doctor at Tampa General Hospital. And Dr. Joseph Varon, he's the chief of staff at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston.

Dr. Wilson, I just want to start with you in Florida, for instance. You know, leaving the tests aside, when we look at the average daily deaths, the chart there, the graph is just rising and rising and rising. A very steep curve in the number of new confirmed deaths, the seven-day moving average. What are you seeing in your hospital?

DR. JASON WILSON, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE, TAMPA GENERAL HOSPITAL: Sure, we're seeing something that looks a little bit different than what we saw over the previous three months. Really starting in June, we started to see very large volumes of young people presenting to us for testing. And once we see that start to happen, we know what's coming.

And so in June, we started seeing 200, 300 people a day coming to our hospital just to be tested, asymptomatic exposures. So we knew two to three weeks later we would see this lag of about 10 to 15 percent of that volume starting to be hospitalized.

And so then we started seeing three to four times the hospitalization rates that we were seeing in March, April, May, over that end part of June and now into July.

Our case mortality rates had stayed very low here, because we had some lead time based off of New York City. We were able to prepare and able to share ICU resources across hospital systems, learn some of the medicine, as well, try to keep them from being intubated when appropriate.

But of course, as you start to lose capacity and lose the ability to create new capacity, you always worry about those case mortality rates, those deaths starting to rise.

CAMEROTA: Dr. Varon, that is really striking, to hear that it's three to four times what they had in March. Because obviously, here in New York, that's when we had -- you know, we were overrun by the outbreak.

President Trump dismissed yesterday or over the weekend, the idea that young people get really sick or that young people are super-spreaders. So listen to how he described it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day. They have the sniffles, and we put it down as a test.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: They have the sniffles. Your thoughts on that, Doctor?

DR. JOSEPH VARON, CHIEF OF STAFF, UNITED MEMORIAL MEDICAL CENTER, HOUSTON: Well, I mean, clearly, we have a lot of young people that come into us deadly. Not the sniffles. Deadly. These are people that are on the brink of death. So they're very, very sick.

The fact that you are young, the fact that you are healthy does not, by any means, make you invincible. And that is something that we need to convey to your viewers.

I mean, if you are young, if you are healthy, that doesn't protect you from -- from corona. You are as likely as somebody else to get sick. So you should not use this as an excuse to, Hey, I'm going to go out; I'm not going to wear my mask, that kind of stuff.

BERMAN: And Dr. Wilson, if you can weigh in here, because we've been hearing from other doctors in Florida that recently, that the number of older patients coming in has begun to go up. This current wave -- I hesitate to use the word "wave" -- this current surge in the hospitals, yes, younger people were the leading edge, but now some older patients are starting to come in, as well.

WILSON: Sure, so older people are always more vulnerable to this, but I think, to Dr. Varon's point, 40 percent of our patients in our critical care areas are under the age of 50. And so of those young super spreaders, as young people who come in, we expect anywhere between 5 to 10 percent of that volume, those same people to come back sicker five days later when we first see them, sort of in the pro- inflammatory phase, the cytokine release phase of this virus. They do get sick.

[06:25:05]

CAMEROTA: Dr. Varon, you say that you're fighting two viruses at the moment: coronavirus and stupidity. And so tell us what you see when you walk out of your hospital doors and how frustrating it is.

VARON: Well, I mean, it's really frustrating. Let me give you an example. A couple of days ago, it's 2 a.m. in the morning. I'm getting out of the hospital after a very long day.

As I go in, I see one of these outdoor malls that is completely packed with cars, a lot of young people, you know, girls with miniskirts. I mean, there is like a party going on. Nobody's wearing a mask. Lots of loud music.

And for me, that I have been working 123 consecutive days, nonstop, it is annoying, to say the least. Because I'm working very hard to save people and yet, I'm seeing this outside.

And the problems, as I -- as we have discussed before, is that everybody is getting a different idea of what's -- what is OK and what is not OK. We are telling people different ideas. And nobody's coming in with a concise, you should not do this, kind of situation.

BERMAN: Dr. Wilson, I'm a parent of two 13-year-old boys. Alisyn has school-aged kids, as well. There was a study out of South Korea. This is a backwards-looking study at the infections in South Korea among younger people. And what it found, looking at thousands of cases, was that the

infection rate among kids, middle-school age and older, you know, 10 to 16 or so, was about equal to that of adults.

In other words, students passed the virus just as much as adults do, and children younger than 10, a much lower rate. But not zero. About half or 40 percent of the rate.

I was surprised to see this, based on some of the things we've been hearing in the United States over the last few weeks. What are the implications of this as we plan on opening schools?

WILSON: And that's the big conversation right now in Hillsborough County. You know, we were supposed to go back to school on August 10. That's been delayed now until at least August 24.

Last night by midnight, I had to turn in a letter that basically said, do I want my kid to go back to a physical school environment or to an e-learning type of environment?

These are really difficult decisions. And they're being made at a point in time where our incidence rate in this area looks to have stabilized in the 45 to 50 per 100,000 cases per day. So that means over 500 and 600 new cases a day, which still means 10 to 15 percent of people being hospitalized each day. So very high volumes right now.

So not only are children, also the teachers in this area, and workforce of those schools in this area, how much can they sustain before they start to see infections?

Now, when we think about kids, there's obviously a lot of questions right now about, do our kids get infected at the same rates? And if so, are they able to spread disease? We think about intergenerational spread.

So far, what we've seen here, in this area, and it may be different in South Korea, we don't know, but what we've seen here is we have not seen a lot of spread from kids to adults. We're not seeing that too much yet.

We certainly see high rates right now. I think we saw some record- breaking rates over these past seven dates for our children, for their positivity rates, but again, very few of those have to be hospitalized, thank goodness. That's one of the few bright spots in this virus. Our kids aren't getting super sick.

But when we consider schools, we've got to take into account not just our kids, because we certainly don't want them to get sick. And to Dr. Varon's point, not all of them are going to do well. We are going to have some kids who get very sick if we have a lot of kids being infected.

But our workforce and our teachers, how do we go back to classrooms? How do we quarantine classrooms? How do we isolate when appropriate, and who do we isolate? These are all questions I'm not sure school districts had a chance to really unwind. BERMAN: And the South Korea study does raise new questions.

Dr. Wilson, Dr. Varon, thank you both for being us this morning.

WILSON: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Tributes continue to come in for Congressman John Lewis. The latest on the plans on his memorial, next.

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