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Carson Ties Trump in Iowa Poll; Thousands of Hillary Clinton E- mails Released; Suspected Cop Killer 'Mentally Incompetent' in 2012; Desperate Migrants Flooding Into Europe; President Obama Slams Climate Change Deniers, Requests More Ice Breaker Ships. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired September 01, 2015 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Two guys who've never held political office leading the race.

[05:58:59] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ben Carson now tied with Donald Trump in Iowa.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: How concerned should the Republican establishment be at this point?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A hundred and twenty-five of the 7,000 e- mails upgraded to classified.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Classification is not an exact science.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's new revelations coming out every week.

PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: She didn't break any rules.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Gruesome details of the way this murder unfolded.

DEVON ANDERSON, HARRIS COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Fifteen shell casings. You can do the math. He unloaded the entire pistol into Deputy Goforth.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The assassination of police officers is on the rise.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's hope that it wasn't because of the uniform. Let's hope that it wasn't race related.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have another incident of somebody with mental illness being able to get a gun.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota and Michaela Pereira.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everybody. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Tuesday, September 1.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Good day, wah-wah.

CAMEROTA: Six o'clock in the East.

First, Donald Trump tied for frontrunner status now. A new Monmouth University poll shows rival Ben Carson tying Trump in the critical state of Iowa. This is the first time in a month that there is a poll that does not give Donald Trump a huge lead over the field.

PEREIRA: Also overnight, a new batch of Hillary Clinton's e- mails released by the State Department. What's in them? Classified information? And does this matter to voters?

Let's get right to CNN senior political reporter, Nia-Malika Henderson, live in Washington, D.C. -- Nia.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey there, Mick, good morning.

So new polls out from Monmouth University. Good news for Ben Carson. And we can tick through the numbers here.

Carson is at 23 percent, tied with Donald Trump. And the trend line here is they're very much up from July. In July, Carson was only at 8 percent. Trump was only at 13 percent. And you've got Fiorina also bunched in there as 10 percent. Cruz as well, at 9 percent. And a lot of the sort of establishment figures not doing as well as they were back in July.

Another poll, and this is from "The Des Moines Register" and Bloomberg, shows a similar trend. Trump there, a 23 percent; Carson at 18 percent; Walker, who was supposed to do really well in Iowa, only at 8 percent. Cruz at 8 percent. Bush at 6 percent, too.

And if you look back, they've got a trend line here back to January. What it really shows is these anti-sort-of-establishment figures, non-politicians, doing well since January. And we think we know why. The Monmouth University poll also shows the GOP likely caucus-goers, only 23 percent want some with government -- someone with government experience. Sixty-six percent want someone outside of government. So that's why folks like Carson and Donald Trump are doing so well.

Back to you.

BERMAN: All right, Nia. Thank you so much.

If you were all lucky enough to sleep last night, you might have missed that the State Department released a whole bunch of e-mails, thousands from Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. So what is inside this latest batch? CNN's Elise Labott, up all night pouring over the pages. She is live with us now -- Elise.

ELISE LABOTT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you're not kidding, John. What we're looking at here is about 125 of the 7,000 e-mails have information that was retroactively classified. Now, they weren't marked classified at the time. But they have been upgraded before releasing them to the public, and parts have been redacted.

Now once again, in these e-mails, we get a sense of her close relationship with former adviser Sydney Blumenthal, who is constantly sending her advice about various issues.

There's also a memo from Chelsea Clinton, reporting back on her trip to Haiti, her frustrations on the ground after the earthquake with the Clinton Foundation. Was sent to her there.

Interestingly, there are e-mails suggesting State Department tech analysts didn't recognize Clinton's server when it worked with the State Department. And one of the e-mails -- we have a screen grab here -- her aide, Huma Abedin, says her e-mail bounced back from someone on the State Department system. And when this person called the help desk, Huma says, "They had no idea it was you."

Now, there were also several e-mails about Clinton's new iPad. When it arrived, her aide, Philippe Reines, says, "Your iPad has arrived." Clinton says, "That's exciting news." She wanted to get some instructions on a flight to Ukraine. You remember, she said she only used her Blackberry; never mentioned an iPad.

There's also a bit of an obsession with criticism from FOX News. A lot of interesting political machinations. Clinton always said that politics was in her DNA.

Now, some of these you really had to be there at the State Department time to know the back story. For instance, Clinton wants an update on gefilte fish. And everybody last night on Twitter was like, what's this gefilte fish? Those of us that were covering the State Department remember a trade dispute with Israel, holding up a huge shipment of gefilte fish to Israel right before Passover. So Clinton wants to know about that gefilte fish problem.

Back to you.

CAMEROTA: Right. It turns out it wasn't code for anything. It really was gefilte fish. It really was.

BERMAN: Sometimes gefilte fish is just gefilte fish.

LABOTT: Sometimes it's just gefilte fish.

BERMAN: Freud wrote that, I think. I think it was Freud.

CAMEROTA: Indeed. Elise, thanks so much.

For much more analysis on all of this, let's bring back in Nia- Malika Henderson; and bring in CNN political commentator and Washington correspondent for "The New Yorker," Ryan Lizza.

Great to see both of you.

Ryan, let's just start with this poll, because for the first time, Donald Trump is tied. So let's look at the entire poll. He is at 23 percent, as is Ben Carson. As you can see, Carly Fiorina, there's another headline. She's now at 10 percent. Look at her rise, from 3 percent.

And what's interesting, Ryan, is if you look at the lower half of the poll, it shows that the two people who most recently won in Iowa -- former governor, Mike Huckabee, and then Rick Santorum -- are barely registering, as you can see here, at 2 percent, basically. So tell us what you see as you look at these numbers.

RYAN LIZZA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: So the first thing I would say, the Carson number is really interesting, because he has not been in the media much, right? And so to the extent that you can explain the Trump bounce -- the huge Trump bounce in the polls as partly related to media obsession with covering Trump, right? If you look at -- there's been some firms that have done this. If you look at the amount of media coverage of Trump and his rise in the polls, they're almost perfectly correlated.

[06:05:29] Now, there's probably some feedback between those two things. But that has not happened with Carson. We have not been talking about him. He's not been on the front pages in Iowa. He's not been much on the mind -- on TV. And so there's something a little more organic going on with his surge in Iowa that you can't just explain by a breakout debate performance or wall-to-wall media coverage.

I think if you look at the favorability ratings for Carson, very high. He's got a ways to go. And he may be the next -- the flavor of the month for September.

BERMAN: He does have support among evangelicals there. Supporters of Ben Carson have spent some money for him in Iowa. But he hasn't even really been there all that much over the last several months. So it is interesting, that rise.

What I find interesting, Nia, is what's Donald Trump going to do about this? Because Donald Trump has had a lot to say, and not much of it nice, about many of his opponents. There's Jeb Bush; there's Scott Walker. He'll go down the list and say something about everyone. I've never heard him say a bad word about Dr. Ben Carson. I know from talking to some people who are close to Trump, that he doesn't really intend to.

HENDERSON: That's right. And Dr. Ben Carson, I talked to his folks yesterday. Dr. Ben Carson doesn't intend to go after Donald Trump, either. Donald Trump had called Ben Carson a good guy. He has described him as a friend. A friend of Ben Carson also used the same language to describe that relationship.

I do think Ben Carson has been smart. He's sort of been quietly waging a ground game in Iowa. He's had these family festivals, where people can come, and the kids can ride ponies and eat popcorn and hear entertainers. He's gotten something like 6,000 people out to these different family festivals. He also was up on the air with direct-to-camera ads in Iowa.

He's got about six staffers there. So he has been there. He was there early. He's got all of these sort of independent organizations that are helping him. And back in June, they had a literature -- a lit dump, basically 10,000 homes in central Iowa, they got a booklet all about Dr. Ben Carson. So some of that, he hasn't necessarily been flooding the cable news airways, but he has been -- had a presence there on the ground in Iowa.

CAMEROTA: OK, so that seems to be working. So Ryan, what happens to Dr. Carson after Iowa?

LIZZA: Well, look, you know, as -- one thing we should always point out with these early polls is early primary polls are not very good at predicting who actually wins the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary.

As you pointed out, the last two winners of the Iowa caucuses on the Republican side, Santorum and Mike Huckabee, did not end up becoming the Republican nominees.

So, one, these polls don't tell us who's going to win Iowa. And even if you win Iowa, you might not become the nominee. I still think a lot of these early polls, it's a lot easier when you call a voter in Iowa for them to register a bit more of a protest vote, because they're not really voting. They're just talking to a pollster. And we saw the last couple of cycles that in the summer, these candidates, the sort of most anti-politician candidates often do well. And the race changes as you get into February, and people have to take a hard look at who they really want to be their nominee.

But, on your question of what happens -- if Carson does win Iowa, well, New Hampshire is a tougher state for him, and then you get into the bigger states, where he doesn't have any organization. And that is always a problem for a sort of insurgent like that.

BERMAN: But it certainly, for the time being, put a little bit of a damper on the Donald Trump discussion. There's now another name in that, as well.

If I could shift to Hillary Clinton just for one moment, these e- mails, these 7,000 pages that came out overnight. There's the gefilte fish. There's a lot of mundane discussion here. But Nia, it seems at a certain point, because there is, as far as I can tell, nothing in here that reeks of illegality in what we're seeing here. But does that even matter now? Because you have these releases and we will have more; and the stench is out there.

HENDERSON: The stench is out there. And like you said, this has happened a couple of times so far. And we sort of root through them all and haven't found anything, so far.

If you look at some of those numbers of these polls that are out from Iowa, Democratic caucus voters, saying -- 61 percent saying they don't think this matters, this e-mail conversation. The fact that she had her personal e-mail and a personal server rather than that government e-mail.

And Hillary Clinton, obviously, is sort of changing her approach to this. She was sort of complaining about this before, saying that she felt like it was an attack, a political attack. Now she's more like explaining it and saying that people have a right to ask questions about this.

[06:10:03] But I think, in some ways, these e-mails kind of help, because there is -- there's no "there" there. I mean, she's talking about the gefilte fish. On one, she was sort of complaining about the fax machine, not knowing how to use that. The iPad. So in some ways, it's a window, almost like a veep-like window into her -- the kind of mundane machinations of working at the State Department.

CAMEROTA: So Ryan...

LIZZA: Yes.

CAMEROTA: ... if there's no smoking gun, when does the e-mail issue go away -- and voters don't seem to care about it, according to polls. When does the e-mail issue go away for Hillary?

LIZZA: I think it goes away when the Justice Department says, you know, "We looked into this and we're not going to take any further action," if that's what they say.

I -- you know, I spent a lot of time last night going through them, too. I would say one thing I think you can -- one takeaway from the e-mails is, if you want to know what Hillary Clinton did as secretary of state, and that's going to be a very important issue in the primaries and if she wins in the general election, I think there's a lot of politics in this e-mail. She has a lot of outside political advisers sending her advice, both on official State Department business and in broader politics going on in the world.

And it's a little bit of sense of -- a few of the e-mails saying, "Be careful about how you engage in certain issues, because it could damage you long-term. If you read between the lines, that's what some of the advice is.

And if you look at Hillary Clinton versus John Kerry, John Kerry has been a much more active secretary of state than Hillary Clinton. And frankly, I think the reason for that is because he's not worrying about running for president one day. He's finished with politics. So I think that's one thing I took away from the e-mails is a sense of caution in Hillary Clinton engaging in some of the diplomacy that the secretary of state is -- often does.

CAMEROTA: That's interesting. That's an interesting analysis. Ryan, Nia, thanks so much.

We do have a programming note. The Republican presidential hopefuls preparing to take the stage, once again. The CNN GOP debate will be September 16. It is happening at the Reagan Library in California. Debate coverage begins at 6 p.m. in the east. The actual debate begins 6 p.m. West Coast time. You will see all of the drama unfold live, right here, only on CNN.

PEREIRA: All right. Some other news now. New details are emerging in the fatal shooting of a sheriff's deputy in Houston. The suspect in the case was found mentally incompetent to stand trial on a felony assault charge back in 2012. Now according to a Texas prosecutor, that's the information we're getting. So how is this going to impact the current case? We get more now from CNN's Rosa Flores, live in Houston -- Rosa.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Michaela, good morning.

New revelations about the suspect's checkered past and also about the history of mental illness raising serious questions this morning in the case that the prosecutor described in open court like the cold- blooded killing of a deputy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FLORES (voice-over): This morning, new insight into the mind of alleged cop killer Shannon Miles. Miles, appearing in a Houston courtroom Monday. The clanking of his shackles the only thing breaking the silence as dozens of deputies stare him down.

ANDERSON: He unloaded the entire weapon into Deputy Goforth.

FLORES: Prosecutors say the 30-year-old ambushed Deputy Darren Goforth at a gas station, the suspect shooting him, execution-style, a total of 15 times. The motive, prosecutors say, is still unclear.

BRIAN MCCULLAR, FRIEND OF DEPUTY DARREN GOFORTH: Let's hope that it wasn't because of uniform. Let's hope that it wasn't race-related.

FLORES: Now CNN has learned the suspect was previously ruled mentally incompetent. Back in 2012, Miles was charged with aggravated assault against a homeless man. Miles, also homeless at the time, was sent to a mental institution for six months. He then ruled competent, but the case never went to trial.

Even given the suspect's mental health history, one Texas sheriff still suggests the killing could have some relation to the Black Lives Matter movement, an ongoing uprising against police brutality.

SHERIFF RON HICKMAN, HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS: It isn't very far stretched to believe that that kind of rhetoric could influence someone.

FLORES: The leaders of the movement say calls for police reform cannot be blamed for the senseless murder.

RASHAD ANTHONY TURNER, LOCAL ORGANIZER, BLACK LIVES MATTER, ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA: Our mission is to end violence against black people and the fact that every 28 hours a black body is killed.

FLORES: As the Houston suburb community continues to mourn the loss of their deputy, President Obama called Goforth's widow Monday to give his condolences, saying he will continue to stand up for the safety of police officers wherever they serve.

ANDERSON: This crime is not going to divide us. This crime is going to unite us.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FLORES: CNN has learned that the defense team is meeting with Miles in jail. They're evaluating him, determining their strategy, which we understand will include their own ballistics tests.

Now, no bail was set yesterday, and now Miles is set to face a judge again in October, but take a look behind me. You can see the memorial growing for Deputy Goforth. And of course, we know that he leaves behind a wife and two children -- John.

[06:15:15] BERMAN: The president called that wife overnight. All right. Thank you so much, Rosa.

Breaking overnight, a second arrest in the deadliest bombing in Thailand's history. According to several media reports, a foreign male suspect has been taken into custody near the Thailand/Cambodia border. He is being held in connection with the August 17 bombing of Bangkok's popular shrine there that killed 20 people and injured more than 100.

CAMEROTA: Now to Europe's unprecedented refugee crisis. This morning, hundreds of migrants arriving by rail in Germany. E.U. leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel calling for flexibility in dealing with this flood of migrants, many from war- ravaged areas of the Middle East and Africa.

CNN senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen is live in Munich with the latest -- Fred.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and Alisyn, I'm right here in front of the Munich railway station, which is a lot -- where a lot of these people arrived that have made their journey through a lot of Europe. And it's actually an interesting moment right now as we go live here, because a bus has just arrived. It's getting ready to take some of these folks to some temporary shelter.

Most of the people that we've been speaking to here in front of the railway station come from Syria. Many of them have made the journey through Turkey, then Greece, then Macedonia, had a very difficult time in Hungary, but have now finally made it here to Germany.

And certainly, there has been a lot of criticism of the European Union the past couple weeks, the past couple of months, because they simply don't have a common approach as to how to deal with the crisis that's going on with the refugees here on the continent. The Hungarians have had some big criticism. The Germans, however, are saying that they're willing to take in anybody who is Syrian and Iraqi and at least allow them to apply for asylum here. And that's one of the reasons why you're seeing the lines behind me that you are seeing, simply because there's so many trains coming here to Munich.

However, I have to say, hats off to the German authorities. They are coping with this very, very well, making sure that these folks don't spend too much time out here in the heat. They get food; they get water; they get medical attention; and then again, they get taken to shelters.

But of course, the authorities here in Germany, just like most other European countries, very much overwhelmed with the flood of people that are coming to this town, Michaela.

PEREIRA: We're having a little bit of transmission problems, but it was so good to see this and hear this from Fred. A humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. Getting the latest from Germany there from Frederik Pleitgen.

President Obama is taking on climate change deniers during a trip to Alaska. He says the time to plead ignorance has surely passed. And now the president reportedly is said to call for more ice breakers to be built and used in the Arctic, allowing the U.S. to expand its foothold there.

CNN's White House correspondent, Michelle Kosinski, live with the very latest -- Michelle.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Michaela.

Right, there's kind of a lot going on on this trip. I'm reporting now that the president today will ask Congress for more ice breaker ships to keep pace with what other countries, like Russia are doing in the Arctic.

He's also looking at glaciers that are disappearing at a rate of 75 billion tons a year. Villages that have to move because of sea level rise. He's meeting with locals, speaking at a climate conference, taping (ph) with TV survivalist Bear Grylls, and yes, changing the name of Mt. McKinley to Denali. That's something that Republicans in Ohio, where President William McKinley was from, are furious about, calling it overreach and a political stunt.

But the White House calls it common sense, since the mountain's been known as Denali for far longer than it has Mt. McKinley. And they say that Alaska has been petitioning to change the name to Denali for decades anyway.

Also, the president is having none of climate change deniers. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The time to heed the critics and the cynics and the deniers has passed. The time to plead ignorance has surely passed. Those who want to ignore the science, they are increasingly alone. They're on their own shrinking island.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOSINSKI: And we're expecting more announcements during this trip, as well as today -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Michelle. Thanks so much for all of that.

Meanwhile, an accused cop killer in Texas found mentally incompetent in 2012 on a felony assault charge. Now he's facing capital murder charges for the shooting death of that sheriff's deputy. Was this mental illness or was it something else?

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[06:23:25] PEREIRA: The man accused of fatally shooting a Texas sheriff's deputy had previously been ruled mentally incompetent. In 2012, Shannon Miles faced trial on felony assault charges but was freed after spending time in a mental hospital. Miles appearing in court Monday, met by a courtroom packed with cops showing solidarity to their murdered colleague, Darren Goforth.

With us this morning, Tim Wise. He's the author of, "Dear White America" and "Color Blind." Joey Jackson is also here, CNN legal analyst.

I think we've got to start with this new information, Joey, about the mental incompetence ruling back in 2012. And if I understand it correctly, after serving time, he was then -- serving time in a mental institution, he was then found competent to stand trial, but they couldn't find the man that he was accused of beating. Does this bring into question his mental health?

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It really does, Michaela. It's a very significant development. And it's significant inasmuch as, in the case you're speaking about, the aggravated assault case, apparently him getting into a dispute at a homeless shelter with someone else.

PEREIRA: Yes.

JACKSON: He's found incompetent. He then goes away for six months. Apparently, he becomes better, and then they move forward with the trial. However, the person could not be found, the homeless person, and the case was dismissed.

It's relevant inasmuch as it gives a prior history of what his mental status would be. Now to be clear, on this case, they're going to have to demonstrate, the prosecutor is going to have to demonstrate that he was mentally competent. And then...

PEREIRA: They'll do a competency -- mental competency testing?

JACKSON: Absolutely.

PEREIRA: Will they also do toxicology? They'll do all of that, right?' JACKSON: They're going to do everything. But what happens is, I

think, because of the facts in this case, which are so compelling and the intent upon which he acted, just shooting an officer in the back of the head and repeatedly shooting...

PEREIRA: Unloading his gun on him.

JACKSON: Absolutely. And what happens is the evidence is compelling. The surveillance, it points to him. So the defense's only play here is to look to his mental state.

PEREIRA: OK.

[06:25:16] JACKSON: And to be clear, it's very difficult in Texas. The burden will be on the defendant, by a preponderance of the evidence, to demonstrate sanity. And briefly, Michaela, you remember, six months ago, we were talking the American sniper.

PEREIRA: Yes.

JACKSON: And Eddie Ray Routh. He was convicted. But I'll tell you the last thing in this case: it's important also to the issue of the death penalty. Because people who have that mental incompetence, the Supreme Court has said, cannot be sentenced to death. So it may, in fact, determine whether the prosecution seeks the death penalty at all in this case.

PEREIRA: Let me bring in Tim Wise, because Tim, I think there's been such a rush to -- there's so much emotion wrapped around this. Because you see someone murdered, just pumping gas; you see them brutally gunned down in such a fashion, shot in the back multiple times.

We've even seen how the sheriff there, perhaps in a moment of emotion, before the investigation is complete, which some are calling into question, the fact that he is saying that this -- he believes this is linked to the Black Lives Matter movement. First of all, what are your thoughts on that?

TIM WISE, AUTHOR, "COLOR BLIND": Well, emotion or not, that's an irresponsible comment. That would be like saying that everyone who calls for education reform or teacher accountability is somehow responsible when some lunatic goes into a school, kills a teacher and shoots up a classroom.

This shooter had no connection to BLM, and in fact, let's be clear. In the year since the Black Lives Matter movement burst onto the scene, the number of police shot and killed by criminal suspects has actually dropped by 25 percent. In the first half of 2014, there were 24 such cases. First half of 2015, 18 cases.

So in fact, to say that the Black Lives Matter movement and the struggle for justice in our justice system is leading to increased violence against police is simply statistically false. And it's irresponsible to shift the discussion away from the truly disproportionate killing of young, unarmed black and brown men and women in this country, to an issue that has nothing to do with the larger movement for police accountability that BLM and other activists have been raising.

PEREIRA: Real quickly, do -- you probably have seen some of this video that's circulating of a group chanting, you know, some really inflammatory rhetoric about killing cops at a Black -- at a Black Lives Matter march. It's not -- I don't believe that it is the sentiment of the entire group under that umbrella at all.

WISE: Right.

PEREIRA: Does that not undo the work that is trying to be done by BLM?

WISE: Well, I think it was an inappropriate chant. But listen, Black Lives Matter is not like the Episcopal Church that has a hymnal book...

PEREIRA: Fair enough.

WISE: ... and this happens to be one of their hymns.

I mean, here's the truth: There were three cops in San Francisco this year who were found sending text messages around, talking about killing, maybe even exterminating black life. And I don't think anyone who's trying to link the chant in Minnesota to Black Lives Matter would appreciate it much if I were to say, "Well, that obviously proves that all cops are members of a hate group." It would be an inappropriate comment in either direction.

PEREIRA: Joey, here's the thing that we understand that one of the suspect's court-appointed attorneys said, they didn't want to make this a race issue. That's going to be a challenge to do, given the sentiment that's going on in the country right now, given where we are. Do you think that he's going to be able to do that?

JACKSON: It could be a challenge. But at the same time, remember, that mental health is very much at issue here.

PEREIRA: Yes.

JACKSON: And so I think that's going to be the focus. What they're going to be examining, Michaela, is the status of his mental health and whether or not he knew right from wrong at the time he committed this. And what else. If that's going to be the absolute key, and if you combine that with what we just spoke about, which was that he was found mentally incompetent at some, you know, prior time, I think they're really going to be doing that. And I think either the judge, the defense council or the prosecutor under statute is going to certainly send him for that mental health evaluation. He'll be examined by experts, and they'll be testifying at trial.

PEREIRA: Tim Wise, Joey Jackson, we really appreciate your analysis on this.

Coming up, we should mention in our 8 a.m. hour, we're going to speak with Ron Hickman. He is the sheriff of Harris County that lost their deputy in this horrific fashion. We're going to ask him about the crime, the investigation, the suspect. We're also going to ask him about those comments that he made after the shooting that are drawing criticism -- John.

BERMAN: Going to be very interesting to hear how he addresses that. Thanks, Michaela.

A judge expected to hand down a ruling in the Deflategate scandal as early as today. Will he uphold Tom Brady's four-game suspension, or will he rule against the NFL? We're going to tell you why the decision may not bring an end to this case.

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